Crumbling Walls
by Dani-Ellie03
Summary: All Emma had wanted to do was return the kid to Maine where he belonged and then go back home. She never expected to stay, she never expected to make friends, and she certainly never expected to find the people she would eventually call family. Series of oneshots chronicling Emma finding a place to belong.
1. Henry

**Title:** Crumbling Walls  
**Summary: **All Emma had wanted to do was return the kid to Maine where he belonged and then go back home. She never expected to stay, she never expected to make friends, and she certainly never expected to find the people she would eventually call family.  
**Spoilers:** Will vary according to chapter, but for safety's sake, let's say everything up through 2x03, "Lady of the Lake."  
**Rating/Warning:** T, for Emma's mouth.  
**Disclaimer:** _Once Upon a Time_ and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. I'm just fiddling with someone else's toys.  
**Author's Note: **Trying something a little different here, but this idea just jumped into my head and refused to leave me alone. Since I am a slave to the plotbunny, I needed to indulge it. Enjoy!

* * *

Exactly when the kid had wormed his way into her heart, Emma Swan had no idea.

Perhaps it was when Henry slipped his hand into hers when she brought him back to Regina the second time. Or maybe it was at some point during the drive to Storybrooke, somewhere in between the license plate game he continued to play even after she refused to join him and the "all the stories in my book of fairy tales are real" conversation. Or perhaps it was the second he showed up on her doorstep in Boston.

Sometimes a tiny, little voice inside her told her that Henry had been in her heart from the day he arrived in this world. That voice was painful, however, and Emma quickly distracted herself every time it whispered to her in an effort to make itself heard.

She knew beyond a doubt that giving him up had been the right thing to do. Not that she would have had much choice in the matter even if she hadn't already decided she couldn't keep him. The courts would have taken him away from her while she finished out her sentence anyway.

But even without the whole jail thing, she had been an eighteen-year-old kid who barely managed to take care of herself. Bringing a helpless baby into that situation was out of the question.

Even though Emma knew she'd done the right thing by her kid, over the years, she'd still thought about him more than she cared to admit.

It was always when her mind was idle; she would catch herself wondering what he looked like now. Whether he liked going to the zoo. Whether he preferred the slides or the swings at the park, or whether he was like her as a child and eschewed swings and slides and see-saws for monkey bars and jungle gyms. Then she would tell herself that no matter what, her son most certainly had a better life now than she would have ever been able to give him.

The night of her twenty-eighth birthday was the first time she'd ever questioned her decision.

The kid was decidedly not happy. Regina Mills didn't exactly strike Emma as the zoo-and-amusement-park type. The only park Henry had likely ever been to was his little castle play structure. Everything Emma had believed her son would have, everything she'd told herself  
to justify her decision to that pesky little voice she tried so hard to ignore… it was all wrong.

And the bitch of the bunch was that she couldn't say she would have done it differently if she knew then what she knew now. After all, she'd chosen to give him up because she couldn't care for him in the way he deserved. That hadn't changed. She just … wished he hadn't ended up here. With _her_.

"Emma! Your ice cream's melting."

The voice startled her. Emma blinked, tearing herself from her mental wandering. The booth at Granny's came back into focus, and she looked across the table at her son, who was frowning at her. "Huh?"

"Your death by chocolate sundae, remember? It's melting." Henry swiftly popped a gooey spoonful of his own caramel sundae into his mouth. After he swallowed, he said, "You're going to have death by chocolate soup in a minute."

Oh, right, she was having ice cream with Henry. How long had she been zoned out?

_Too long_, Emma thought as she frowned down at her melting sundae. Before this afternoon, she didn't believe that there was such a thing as too much chocolate. Now? She had to admit that there might be some merit to that argument.

Ruby had given Emma a funny look when she ordered a hot fudge sundae with double chocolate chip ice cream and a sprinkling of jimmies. As a matter of fact, Ruby was the one who'd dubbed the concoction "death by chocolate." Emma had expected it to be the best sundae in the history of sundaes. The jimmies, though … they may have been overkill.

Now that she'd ordered the damn thing and insisted it would be delicious, she had a reputation to uphold. "Mmm, chocolate soup," she said teasingly. She poked her spoon into the half-melted ice cream. Maybe if she could somehow avoid the jimmies, she could choke down a few more bites.

"With the cherry on the bottom," Henry added, nodding sagely.

The first time they'd gotten sundaes together, Henry had watched in amusement as she spooned the cherry off the top of the whipped cream and shoved it to the bottom of the dish. When he looked up at her with a questioning quirk of a single eyebrow, she'd shrugged and said, "Saving the best for last."

It hadn't escaped her notice that Henry had started burying the cherries under the ice cream of his own sundaes after that.

"With the cherry on the bottom," she agreed, preparing herself for another chocolate-y bite.

"So what were you thinking about?" Henry asked her. He tried to sound nonchalant, as if he was just trying to make conversation as he fished an M&M out of his sundae with the tip of his spoon.

Unfortunately for Henry, he was a long way from being able to believably fake nonchalance to someone who made a living catching people in lies. Emma heard the tiny bit of concern in his voice and sighed; like she had any intention of telling him what had been running through her head. "What makes you think I was thinking about anything?"

He gave her his patented I'm-ten-not-stupid look before pointing his spoon at her sundae. "Ice cream soup."

Damn that kid and his keen observational skills.

"Not to mention that I called your name four times before you answered me."

Damn her own mental meandering! Now she had to come up with something on the fly. "I was just thinking … maybe Graham will let me extend my lunch another half-hour."

Emma took her lunch break late so she could meet up with Henry for a little while after he got out of school. She ate her sandwich at her desk – or, on rare occasions, in the passenger seat of the car on the way to do something vaguely resembling law enforcement – and used her break time to have a snack with Henry.

So far, Regina hadn't said a word about Emma's new preference for plying the kid with sugar and fat. Either she hadn't noticed (pretty much an impossibility) or she was waiting for an opportune moment to bring it up (much more likely).

"Do you guys have a lot going on today?" Henry asked. This time, his conversational tone was natural, indicating that he wasn't trying to pry. He was simply curious.

"About as much going on as we normally do," Emma shrugged, then wrinkled her nose at her half-eaten sundae. _Half is going to have to be enough_, she thought, setting her spoon down on the table. _I'm so done_. "Which means I've been playing mahjong solitaire on the computer while he reads the paper."

"You like computer games?"

The kid's eyes had brightened so much that it actually pained her to have to burst his little bubble. "Not particularly, but there's nothing else to do."

"Oh," Henry said, pouting down at his sundae.

"Why? Do you like computer games?"

The expression on his face told her quite clearly that he adored computer games like any self-respecting ten-year-old boy should. And that look gave Emma an idea. "Come on," she said with a grin. She fished out her wallet to pay for their sundaes. "Finish your ice cream."

Henry furrowed his brow in confusion but did as she asked, cramming the last bit of caramel, ice cream, and M&Ms into his mouth. "Why?" he asked around the mouthful of sundae. "Where are we going?"

"We're going to the sheriff's station," Emma told him as she slid out of the booth, "so you can show me the computer games you like."

From the look on his face, one would have thought Emma had just told him that Christmas was coming two months early this year. He climbed out of the booth, already chattering on and on about Oregon Trail this and Bookworm that. "Oh!" he exclaimed. "And then there's this one online called Tower Blaster that I love. It's so _frustrating_ but it's _so_ fun! You'll see."

She told him to stay put while she went to pay Ruby for their ice cream. As soon as Emma was out of Henry's line of sight, she gave an indulgent roll of her eyes. Ruby simply grinned at her before whispering, "Good luck."

"Thanks," Emma replied. She had a funny feeling she was going to need it.

She and Henry left Granny's and headed for the sheriff's station side by side. A few feet down the sidewalk, Henry slipped his hand into hers. Emma tried – and failed – to ignore the way her heart jumped at the contact. Instead, she gave his hand a light squeeze before pulling her hand free. When he smiled up at her and sidled closer, she couldn't help smiling back.

As they walked, he babbled about all the games he wanted to show her. From the fast clip of his speech, Emma gathered that Regina didn't allow much talk of video games and that he was excited to finally have someone who seemed interested. She was surprised by how much her heart broke for the kid. She knew that lonely feeling of not having anyone to talk to quite well, so she doubled her effort to give Henry her undivided attention. Not because she really cared about computer games but because she cared about Henry and Henry cared about computer games.

No, she couldn't put her finger on exactly when he had wormed his little way into her heart. But she was finding, to her complete surprise, that she was really glad he did.


	2. Mary Margaret

"You know, if things get … cramped, I do have a spare room."

Emma swore her heart had skipped a beat at Mary Margaret Blanchard's words. She couldn't have seriously been offering to open up her home to someone she barely knew. Could she?

No, she had to have been saying it just to be polite. On the other hand, though this wasn't the first time Emma had been caught camping out in her car, it was the first time anyone had offered her an alternative. Still, Emma couldn't imagine imposing on the teacher like that. Plus, she did better on her own. So she told Mary Margaret that she was fine where she was.

Mary Margaret, somehow sensing that she'd inadvertently put Emma on guard, told her without actually telling her that the offer still stood if she changed her mind before bidding her good night.

Emma hadn't had the slightest intention of changing her mind. Then Regina Mills had to go spouting off about how being alone was the worst curse of all. It freaking _killed_ her to admit that Regina had a decent point about anything but … there it was.

Being alone, not having anyone to talk to or share fears or happiness with, not having someone to love or having someone to love her back … Emma had to admit, it was torturous. She left the hospital without even realizing where she was going, and pretty soon, she found herself in front of Mary Margaret Blanchard's apartment.

Before she had time to think better of it, she knocked on the door. When Mary Margaret answered, Emma asked almost hesitantly if the room was still available. The tiny smile on Mary Margaret's face when she waved her into the apartment made Emma smile, too.

"It isn't much," Mary Margaret said as she led Emma up a steep metal staircase, "but it's a bit roomier than your car."

The furniture in the loft space consisted of a double bed with a white wrought iron headboard, a pale green ceramic lamp on a small white nightstand, and a five-drawer dresser, also painted white. The bedding and accents were done in pastels and gingham and tiny delicate flower blossoms, a style Emma usually thought of as country cabin kitsch.

For some reason, though, she found the style rather fitting for this space. Even charming, in its own cutesy little way. It was very … Mary Margaret. "It's perfect," she said, a smile on her lips.

And she meant it. Out of the many rooms she'd slept in, none of them had felt this … comfortable? No, that wasn't quite right, but the word she really wanted was just out of her reach. She exhaled through her nose and let the mental thread drop, figuring it would come to her eventually.

"Thank you," she said to Mary Margaret, finally remembering her manners.

"You're very welcome, Emma," Mary Margaret replied, giving her a smile. "You must be tired, so I'll let you get settled. I'll be downstairs if you need anything."

Emma gave her a grateful nod before she disappeared down the stairs. Once alone, Emma sat down on the bed to test out the mattress. Not too firm, not too soft. "Just right," she murmured to herself.

Ugh, how very Goldilocks of her. That did it; she was clearly spending too much time with Henry if she was now unconsciously quoting fairy tales. Rolling her eyes at herself, she kicked off her boots before swinging her legs up onto the bed.

She settled down on her back, interlacing her fingers behind her head. Closing her eyes, she listened to the soft sounds of Mary Margaret finishing up the dishes while humming something vaguely familiar. Emma knew she'd heard the song before but she couldn't place how she knew it. Not that it really mattered; the humming was soothing. Only when she smelled the cocoa did she open her eyes, climb off the bed, and head downstairs.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Emma," Mary Margaret spoke up when she spotted her on the stairs. "Did I disturb you?"

"No, not at all," Emma assured her. "I was just wondering if you made enough hot chocolate to share."

A gentle smile played across Mary Margaret's lips as she poured a mug of cocoa for her new roommate. She handed the mug to Emma and then gestured towards the table, silently suggesting they sit. Wordlessly, they both pulled out chairs and sat down across from the each other. "Is everything okay upstairs?" Mary Margaret asked. "Do you need anything?"

Emma was vaguely amused by how nervous the other woman sounded. She'd clearly never done the roommate thing before and was afraid of somehow screwing it up. "Whoa, slow down. You're a roommate, not a mother." _Well_, Emma thought, _depending on who you ask. _"If I need anything, I'll ask you."

A rush of color turned Mary Margaret's cheeks a light shade of pink. "Sorry. I've never done this before."

"You don't say," Emma teased.

The two of them fell into a comfortable silence, sipping their cocoa. Emma had no idea what Mary Margaret was thinking, but she herself was thinking about how her life had changed in such a short time. In a matter of days, she'd left Boston to bring the son she'd given up for adoption back to Maine, ended up staying in town because of the situation with the kid, and now, she was sharing an apartment with someone?

Of course, she was only crashing with Mary Margaret until she found a place of her own. The little inner voice that she often tried very hard to ignore whispered that she should allow herself to get comfortable here. That here with Mary Margaret was exactly where she was supposed to be.

She shook her head in an effort to shut the voice up. But now that the seed had been planted … "Can I ask you something?" she spoke up, her voice soft.

"Of course," Mary Margaret replied with her typical friendliness.

After taking a breath, Emma asked, "Why did you offer to let me stay with you?"

"Emma, you were staying in a car."

At that, Emma winced and tore her gaze from Mary Margaret's, staring down at her cocoa instead. Of course, Mary Margaret had offered to let her stay here out of pity. She'd been hoping against hope that maybe she had done so out of some kind of … not affection, really, but … Emma didn't even know. Just anything but pity.

"Wait, Emma, I didn't mean for it to come out like that," Mary Margaret sputtered. "I just meant that you were in a jam. I consider you a friend, and I don't let friends sleep in their cars."

Despite her misgivings, Emma felt a small smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. She'd had what she'd thought were friends before but she couldn't imagine any of those people offering her a place to stay just because they were friends. Whether that meant they weren't truly friends to begin with or that Mary Margaret was an amazingly special friend, Emma had no idea.

And there was that pesky little voice again, telling her that this was something she needed to explore. Why was Mary Margaret different? Why was Emma so much more at ease with her than she had been with anyone else in … perhaps ever?

Again, she shook her head in an attempt to silence the voice. "Yeah, but whether you consider me a friend or not, you don't really know me. How do you know I'm not just going to rip you off?"

"Call it gut instinct." Mary Margaret shrugged lightly and took another sip of cocoa. "I told you before that I trust you. I know you believe that I have no real reason to trust you, but you know what? I have no real reason not to trust you, either."

That right there, Emma realized, was the fundamental difference between her and Mary Margaret. Emma's distrust of other people was born of experience and had become second nature. Mary Margaret trusted people until they gave her a reason not to. She believed that people were innocent until proven guilty while Emma believed they were guilty until proven innocent.

In a way, she admired Mary Margaret's optimistic view of human nature and her idealism. On the other hand, she knew there would eventually come a day when that optimism and idealism resulted in Mary Margaret's broken heart.

"So," Mary Margaret spoke up teasingly, "are you secretly planning on ripping me off?"

The sparkle in her roommate's eye drew Emma out of her morose mental wandering. She bit back a smile as she said, "Nope."

"Then I guess I don't have anything to worry about, do I?"

"You never know," Emma said, returning the teasing. "If I was planning on ripping you off, it's not like I'd just admit it."

They shared a quiet chuckle. After a few moments of silence, Mary Margaret said, "You know, Emma, I'm really glad you changed your mind."

"I am, too," Emma replied. She noted with some surprise that she actually meant it.


	3. A Job and Some Cake

Emma couldn't believe that Sheriff Graham had offered her a job. A job! She couldn't take a job here. Her little inner voice asked her, "Why not?"

Although she usually she ignored that voice, this time she tried to answer it. She couldn't take a job here because she wasn't staying that long. True, she didn't really know how long she was staying but it certainly wouldn't be long enough to make all the new-hire paperwork worth it. Not to mention how much of the sheriff's time it would waste getting her on the payroll only to have to take her off of it again. She highly doubted she'd be in Storybrooke long enough to make it through the typical ninety-day probationary period.

And then came Regina Mills once again running her mouth. Who in the hell did that woman think she was, looking into Emma's past like that? She'd made it sound like she was simply concerned for Henry but Emma had seen right through that excuse. Just what did the mayor have against her anyway? Someone needed to knock Regina down a peg or five.

But the kicker was Henry telling her she could leave if she wanted. Oh, he'd couched it in other language, rambling on and on about how she was different because she was the savior and the savior could leave Storybrooke. The message behind his fairy-tale rambling was clear as day to her, though: "You don't have to stay here for me."

That was when Emma realized that yes, she did have to stay. She had to stay for Henry. The kid may have been absolving her of responsibility, but it didn't work that way. She couldn't absolve herself of the responsibility she felt for him.

She told Henry without actually speaking the words that she was staying. And if she intended to stay for at least the next little while, maybe the job wouldn't be such a bad idea. So she called Graham and accepted the job as his deputy.

A huge part of her swore she'd done it just to stick it to Regina. No roots, huh? Well, now look who had a place to stay _and_ a job. With a salary paid for by Storybrooke itself, no less! But her internal voice reminded her that maybe she'd accepted the job because she was tired of running and that maybe she was supposed to be here in Storybrooke.

She successfully ignored it this time.

By the time Emma opened the door to the apartment, Mary Margaret was already home. She looked up from her task at the counter at her new roommate's entrance and an expression of concern immediately clouded her features. "Are you all right, Emma? You look wiped."

"I? Have had a _day_," Emma replied as she closed the door behind her.

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" Mary Margaret dried her hands on a dishrag, which she then slung over her shoulder.

Huh, good question. While Emma wasn't exactly thrilled about owing Mr. Gold a favor, the rest of the day had worked out all right. She'd found Ashley, allowed her to keep the baby, and spent time with her son. On the balance, owing Gold a favor didn't seem that bad. "It's a busy thing," she non-answered.

Emma shrugged off her jacket as she approached the counter. In front of Mary Margaret lay a wrapped package of chicken tenders. A box of penne pasta also sat in wait and next to it were ingredients for what Emma could only guess was Alfredo sauce. "Is that dinner?"

"Yes." Mary Margaret's eyes widened as she met Emma's gaze. "Oh, I should have asked! Do you like chicken Alfredo?"

Emma raised her eyebrows in mock surprise. "There are people who don't like chicken Alfredo?" Not that Emma recalled ever having homemade chicken Alfredo. Frozen dinners, sure, and at restaurants, absolutely, but never homemade.

Mary Margaret grinned. Easy silence settled between them as she returned her attention to the dinner preparations. She set a pot of water on the stove to boil before starting on the sauce.

Emma was content to just watch her. To say that she didn't have the knack for cooking was an understatement. She told people on the rare occasions they asked that she felt cooking for one was kind of pointless, but in truth, she simply didn't have the patience for it. She could whip up things from a box, but anything that required more time and energy than that was just asking for trouble.

"You want to learn?" Mary Margaret asked, her voice soft.

When Emma looked up, she found her roommate regarding her with an amused smile. Crap, she must have been staring. "No, that's okay. I'm not good at it. I'd just mess you up."

Mary Margaret opened her mouth to reply but then seemed to think better of what she was about to say. She closed her mouth, nodding instead. "So what about your day made it busy?"

The forwardness of the question threw Emma. She looked up sharply but softened when she realized that Mary Margaret wasn't trying to pry. Someone had actually asked her how her day was, Emma realized with a tiny smile.

She leaned forward, resting her forearms on the counter, as she filled Mary Margaret in on the events of the day. Ashley, Gold, Henry, everything. When she got to the part about accepting Graham's job offer, Mary Margaret's eyes lit up in excitement. "Oh, Emma, that's wonderful! We need to do something to celebrate. It's too late tonight, but tomorrow, I'm baking you a cake."

"Whoa, there, Huckleberry," Emma interrupted, waving her hands in front of her. "Calm down. It's just a job. It's hardly worthy of a cake."

Again, Mary Margaret started to say something before seemingly changing her mind. "Maybe it is just a job. I'm still baking you a cake. Chocolate or yellow?"

Emma rolled her eyes. The woman was impossible! However, if Mary Margaret absolutely insisted on making Emma a cake, who was she to argue with that? "Chocolate."

"Chocolate it is," Mary Margaret replied with a grin.

Despite her exasperation, Emma smiled back. The smile faded a little as she watched Mary Margaret pour a generous amount of heavy cream into the sauce pot. "You know, I'm going to gain seven hundred pounds living here if you keep on making Alfredo sauce and cakes and stuff."

"Rats," Mary Margaret joked. "You've caught onto my evil plan."

The smile on Emma's face widened. "So, I've told you about my day. I believe that means it's time for you to tell me about yours."

"Compared to yours, I'm afraid mine was rather uneventful."

Mary Margaret may have thought her little errands and cleaning tasks were uneventful but Emma listened in wonder as her new roommate described more running around to various places and more cleaning projects than Emma typically tackled in a week. She also couldn't help noticing that as she talked, Mary Margaret expertly tossed ingredients into the pot without measuring.

When Mary Margaret turned her attention to the chicken, Emma picked up the wooden spoon and dipped it into the pot. She managed to get in a quick taste before Mary Margaret snatched the spoon from her hand. "Emma! It's not done yet!"

"Well, if that's 'not done,' it's going to be fantastic when it is done," Emma said. Despite the fact that the cheese hadn't fully melted down, the sauce was already delicious. "How did you do that?"

Mary Margaret shrugged, clearly not understanding what the big deal was. "All I did was make Alfredo sauce."

"Yeah, maybe to you all you did was make Alfredo sauce," Emma told her. "The only experience I have with Alfredo sauce is pouring a jar of Classico into a pot to heat through."

Mary Margaret briefly wrinkled her nose at Emma's culinary inexperience. "Yes, well, I could have taught you, but you said you didn't want to learn."

Damn it, she had rejected the woman's offer, hadn't she? Perhaps she'd been a little hasty with that decision.

"If you want, we could do a baking lesson tomorrow," Mary Margaret offered. "If you don't already know how to bake a cake, of course."

Emma had a funny feeling that Mary Margaret didn't mean grabbing a box of cake mix and a can of frosting off a grocery store shelf. Emma didn't make things from scratch. The last time she'd made something from scratch, she and another girl in one of her foster homes had baked misshapen Toll House cookies and had gotten punished for using up the last of the eggs.

The nervousness she felt must have shown on her face. "You're not going to screw it up, Emma," Mary Margaret gently told her.

"No, it's not that. It's just …" She trailed off, unable to come up with a reasonable alibi.

"I'll let you crack the eggs," Mary Margaret teased, "and you'll get to lick the bowl."

At that, Emma laughed. "Aw, you promise?"

Mary Margaret nodded, giving her a kind smile. "So, what do you say? Are we on for tomorrow?"

"Yeah, I guess so," Emma finally relented. Mostly she wondered what on earth she'd just gotten herself into, but a little part of her, for some inexplicable reason, was really looking forward to baking with Mary Margaret.


	4. Pizza Party

The one silver lining to the whole "Henry and Archie trapped in a cave-in" disaster was that Emma now had something to hang over Regina's head.

She discovered this a couple of days after the mine incident. Emma had called the mayor and told her she would like to take Henry for dinner that evening. Regina had protested vehemently enough to be quite insulting, if Emma did say so herself. The words tumbled from her mouth before she could think better of them. "Regina, I saved the kid's life. I think I've earned the right to have dinner with him."

For the first time since they'd met, Regina was speechless. Unfortunately, she was only speechless for a few seconds. "You will pick him up after school, you will make sure he does his homework, and you will bring him home by seven. On the dot, Ms. Swan, or this first time will be the last."

A slew of sarcastic responses had flown through Emma's head but she'd managed to restrain herself to a civil thank you. As was typical, she realized after she disconnected the call, Regina's conditions had presented her with a slight problem: she got out of work about two hours after school let out. With an exasperated grunt, she'd turned to Graham and asked if he minded Henry coming back to the station with her until her shift ended.

Of course, Graham hadn't minded at all.

The second call she'd placed was to Mary Margaret, whom she had luckily caught at lunch. The teacher had first sounded thrilled to have a little guest for dinner and then slightly nervous when Emma told her not to worry about preparing anything.

"I do have a few go-to dishes I can make," Emma had told her, rolling her eyes. She hadn't survived on own this long without being able to cook _something_. "I promise it'll be fine."

Mary Margaret's voice betrayed a tiny bit of uncertainty but she eventually relinquished control of the kitchen to her roommate.

Before hanging up, Emma elicited a promise that Mary Margaret wouldn't tell Henry about the dinner plans; she wanted to surprise him. Then she watched the clock and anxiously awaited school being let out for the day.

When Henry saw Emma waiting for him after school, a huge grin spread on his face. The excitement in his eyes made her heart jump. Why on earth was the kid so happy to see her? Was he that starved for attention that he had latched onto her simply because she gave him the time of day? The little voice inside her whispered that she was doing much more than giving him the time of day. She cared about him, and he was responding to that.

This time, the voice wasn't painful; it was terrifying. The notion of a child being so alone that he responded to even the tiniest bit affection was all too familiar.

"Emma!" Henry's cry drew her out of her reverie. "What are you doing here?"

"You're mine this afternoon, kid," she told him with a tiny smile. "We're having dinner together, but first, you have to come back to the station with me until my shift is over. I figure you can work on your homework or something."

She had expected an argument. She certainly would have put up a fight at Henry's age if someone told her she had to sit in a boring office for a couple of hours and do her homework. But Henry just nodded while looking absolutely thrilled to be spending time with her at all.

They headed back to the station. After Henry finished his homework, Emma gave up her seat at her desk so the kid could fiddle around on the computer. "What was that game you play?" he asked her.

"Mahjong solitaire?" Emma asked. She tapped the keys to bring up the game screen, matched a couple of pairs of tiles to show him how to play, and let him go to it.

Graham, while trying and failing to hide a smile at mother and son, told Emma she could go even though she still had an hour left on her shift. Emma thanked him, then raised her eyebrows at Henry. "Race you!" she exclaimed, grabbing her jacket and heading for the door.

"Hey, no fair head starts!" Henry laughed as he hooked his backpack over his shoulder and snatched his jacket off the back of Emma's chair. He quickly gave chase and caught up with her at the sheriff's station door.

Emma arrived at the car just ahead of Henry. "All right, kid," she said, pulling open the driver's side door, "get in and buckle up. We have to hit the grocery store before heading back to the apartment."

Since Storybrooke was the epitome of small-town Maine, the grocery store was less than a five-minute drive from the sheriff's station. Emma pulled into a parking spot and cut the engine. "This'll be quick. I just need to get a few things for dinner."

"What are we having?" Henry asked as he climbed out of the car.

"We're going to make our own pizzas," Emma replied, heading towards the store entrance. She felt his hand latch onto hers and hid a smile. "Just let me know what toppings you want."

"Bacon," the kid answered immediately and with the same vehemence Regina had used when she'd first denied Emma's request to take Henry for the afternoon.

"Bacon pizza?"

"Bacon pizza is awesome," he insisted. "I don't have it a lot because my mom won't get it for me but it's _so_ good."

Emma didn't even have to ask how Henry knew that bacon pizza was good if Regina had outlawed it. He probably ordered it with his own money every chance he got, same as she would have done if her foster parents had forbidden something she really liked.

Now Emma was left with a quandary. Allowing Henry to eat something that Regina specifically did not was just asking for trouble. The expectant look on the kid's face, however, tugged at her heart. Aw, crap, she couldn't say no to him. "All right," she sighed. "Bacon it is."

She picked up jars of sauce, bags of cheese, and three roll-out pizza crusts along with some veggies for toppings and fixings for a salad. After paying for the dinner ingredients and a candy bar that Henry had wheedled her into tacking onto the order, the two of them finally made their way to the apartment.

"I hope you don't mind hanging out with your teacher outside of school," Emma told him as they climbed the stairs, each of them lugging a grocery bag.

"I don't mind at all," Henry replied, smiling.

Emma returned the smile as she turned her key in the lock. When she and Henry entered the apartment, they found Mary Margaret seated at the table, grading papers. "Are those our spelling tests?" Henry asked as he set the grocery bag on the counter.

"Yes," the teacher answered, quickly piling the papers and tucking them into her grade book.

"How'd I do?"

"Henry!" Emma cried. Though she didn't know the exact etiquette regarding having dinner with one's teacher, she had a funny feeling that asking one's grade on a test outside of school hours went against it.

Mary Margaret met her roommate's eye and gave her a slight nod, letting her know it was okay. Then she smiled at Henry. "You got a hundred, as if you had any doubt." She pushed herself up from the table and, grade book in hand, peeked into the grocery bags. "So what are we doing for dinner?"

"We're having a make-your-own pizza party!" Henry exclaimed.

When Mary Margaret arched an eyebrow at her roommate, Emma shrugged. "Hey, it's something I can cook. Besides, I thought it'd be kind of fun."

What she left unstated was the fact that she'd actually had quite a bit of fun during their baking session a few days ago and she wanted to share that fun with Henry. After all, Regina didn't exactly strike her as the let's-make-pizza-together type.

The more she thought about her plan, though, the more she realized how … un-Emma it was. She shook her slightly in disbelief. If anyone had told her a year ago that she would be learning how to bake and holding make-your-own pizza parties with her son and a fourth-grade teacher who was quickly becoming a very good friend, she would have laughed in that person's face.

"Cookie sheets are in the cabinets under the counter," Mary Margaret said to Emma, giving her a small smile. She headed into her bedroom, presumably to hide her grade book, since she returned without it.

As Emma rolled out the pizza crusts on the cookie sheets, Mary Margaret turned on a radio. From the opening riff of The Byrds' "Mr. Tambourine Man," Emma gathered that she'd tuned the radio to whatever oldies station was in Storybrooke's radius. She opened her mouth to protest with a "Seriously?" but closed it when she saw Henry's little foot tapping in time with the music. She softened and before she knew it, she found herself humming along.

Mary Margaret chopped the vegetables for both the pizza and the salad while Henry began collecting them in little bowls for the pizza assembly line. When Emma began crisping up the bacon, Mary Margaret raised her eyebrows. Emma shrugged and nodded towards Henry to let her know it was the kid's idea. "Don't worry," Henry said with a grin at the two women, "you both will be trying some."

"We will?" Emma and Mary Margaret asked in unison.

"Uh huh," he nodded, then looked at Emma. "Aren't we going to share the pizzas we make? You know, I take some of yours and Miss Blanchard's, and she takes some of mine and yours–"

"I get it," Emma interrupted. She looked over Henry's head at Mary Margaret, who smiled at her. "That actually sounds like a lot of fun. I just don't know if I'll like bacon pizza."

Henry frowned, as if he couldn't understand how anyone could not like bacon pizza. "Well, I know you like bacon because I've seen you eat it at breakfast, and obviously you like pizza since this was your idea. So why not put them both together?"

Actually, the kid had a sound point. "Yeah, well, we'll see," was all she said to him.

They finished putting together their pizzas – pepper and onion for Emma but Mary Margaret couldn't resist getting a little fancy and making barbecue chicken pizza with sauce she had on hand and leftovers from the previous night's dinner. Once they all proclaimed their pizzas perfect, Emma popped them into the oven to bake before starting to put the salad together.

Mary Margaret and Henry used the baking time to dance around the living area to the oldies still pouring from the radio. Emma watched them with a tiny smile. She wasn't a dance-around-the-house kind of person but she enjoyed seeing Henry have fun. Just as she set the salad bowl on the table, the oven timer buzzed, indicating that dinner was ready.

The three of them loaded their plates with pizza and salad and sat down to eat. After a hesitant first bite, Emma decided that bacon pizza was pretty much food of the gods. "Good call, Henry," she said. "I can hear my arteries hardening as I swallow, but this is delicious!"

"See?" he replied, beaming. "I told you."

Mary Margaret's barbecue chicken pizza was delicious, too, which Emma expected. The real surprise was that Emma's pepper and onion was so well-received. Both Henry and Mary Margaret loved it, and her roommate begged Emma to spill her secret ingredient (which was a bit of garlic salt to season the cheese). Emma good-naturedly refused.

Eventually, Emma leaned back in her chair, completely stuffed. "The three of us make awesome pizzas."

"We do," Mary Margaret agreed.

Henry nodded his agreement, then looked over at Emma with a tiny smile. "Emma?"

"Hmm?"

"This is the best dinner I've had in a long time," he said, his smile growing wider. "Thanks."

A rush of emotion washed over Emma at not only Henry's words but also the love and affection in his eyes. It was all she could do to keep the emotion out of her voice when she said, "Anytime, kid."


	5. Aftermath

**Author's Note:** I apologize for interrupting the typical fluff with this angsty little chapter, but it was 1) time for it, and 2) ridiculously fun to write. Please forgive me? :)

* * *

The first number Emma called was 911, which simply patched her through to the sheriff's station. "Of all the goddamned stupidly inefficient …" she muttered, disconnecting the call. She positioned her fingers over her cell and tried to remember the hospital's number.

Damn it, she _should_ know this. Graham had quizzed her on all the emergency numbers – multiple times. Why the hell couldn't she remember it now that she actually needed the goddamned thing? Giving up, she dialed Mary Margaret instead.

"I need you to call the hospital for an ambulance," she said when Mary Margaret answered. Her voice was surprisingly controlled considering the circumstances.

"Emma? Where are you? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. Just please call the hospital and tell them to send the ambulance to the station." She disconnected the call, realizing belatedly that she'd just hung up on her roommate. Damn it all to hell. Oh, well, Mary Margaret would surely understand, right?

Without realizing what she was doing, she began running her fingers through Graham's hair. He couldn't be dead. He just couldn't be. He was just standing here with her! Talking to her. Kissing her. Tears burned in her eyes but she refused to let them fall.

Seconds that felt like an eternity later, she heard the wailing of the approaching siren. "Thank you, Mary Margaret," she murmured, although she knew deep down that the siren wasn't necessary. Graham wasn't breathing and he had no pulse. Nothing could be done for him now.

The paramedics burst into the station. Emma knew she should get up off the floor and out of their way but she couldn't seem to make herself leave Graham. One of the paramedics gently pulled her to her feet and sat her down in one of the desk chairs.

She sat there watching the paramedics as they worked, their voices fading into a low hum of technical jargon she didn't understand. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw someone approaching her. It didn't register that the person could be coming _for_ her until she felt a gentle hand on her shoulder. "Come on, Emma."

It was Mary Margaret, Emma realized with an internal groan. Of course the teacher wouldn't have been able to stay at home after getting a call like that. Emma wished she had.

She shrugged her roommate's hand away. Not trusting herself to talk, Emma simply shook her head. Luckily Mary Margaret seemed to get the hint and stood next to the chair. Emma was watching the paramedics but Mary Margaret was watching Emma.

They had lifted Graham off the floor and were now getting him settled on the stretcher. One of the paramedics started to pull the sheet over the sheriff's head but, after a glance at Emma, folded it down around his shoulders instead. Then they wheeled the stretcher out of the station, leaving Emma and Mary Margaret in relative peace.

For a long moment, neither of them moved. Then Emma saw Mary Margaret lift a hand, probably to touch her shoulder again, but she seemed to think better of it. "Come on, Emma," she repeated instead. "Let's get you home."

"No," Emma said with a shake of her head. "I want to go to the hospital."

"Emma …"

The tenderness of Mary Margaret's voice was at the same time remarkably inviting and somewhat condescending. If Emma allowed herself, she could fall apart right here, right now. But she didn't want to fall apart and she didn't want to go back to the apartment, and she resented the implication in Mary Margaret's tone that she was too emotionally unstable to make that decision. "I'm going to the hospital," she insisted, making a shaky grab for the car keys resting on her desk, "with or without you."

Sighing, Mary Margaret slipped the keys from her hand. "I guess we're going to the hospital, then."

As they headed for the door, Emma looked over her shoulder. She stopped walking and closed her eyes. She could see him now. She could see him kiss her and then break away, she could see him look at her with wonder and gratitude and warmth. Then the image changed and all she could see was Graham falling down at her feet. Her eyes snapped open, and she hurried to catch up with Mary Margaret.

The ride to the hospital was made in silence. Mary Margaret looked like she was bursting with questions but, thankfully, she kept them to herself. She'd just barely pulled Emma's Bug into a parking space when Emma opened the door and dashed out of the car, heading straight for the emergency entrance.

A visibly shaken Dr. Whale was crossing the hallway when Emma caught up with him. "Miss Swan, are you all right?"

"What happened?" she asked. Her voice was a low monotone, which she knew should trouble her but didn't. There were bigger things going at the moment.

"We can't be sure until we …" he trailed off, figuring she would be able to fill in the rest. And she could: until they conducted an autopsy. "Can you tell me what he was doing when it happened?"

_We kissed_, she thought. _We kissed and then he just went down_. Out loud, she said, "We were talking. I mean, he was sick today but we … we were just talking and then …" A sudden chill ran down her spine, and she crossed her arms over her chest in an effort to warm herself.

"I'm so sorry," he said, and she noted with surprise that he actually looked like he meant it. "Since you're here, I'd like to take a look at you, too."

"I'm fine," she told him, shaking her head.

Dr. Whale gave her an inscrutable look before nodding and asking Mary Margaret, who had caught up with them at some point Emma couldn't determine, if she had a minute.

Emma heard Dr. Whale murmur something about home and something warm to drink and rest. He was giving Mary Margaret goddamned instructions! For Christ's sake, Emma didn't need to be handled with kid gloves. She was fine. She just needed to be left alone.

Unable to stand still any longer, she wandered away from the doctor and her roommate. She walked the hallway, searching for something she didn't want to find. Two rooms down, she found it.

She found him.

A sheet-covered body lay on a stretcher but Emma knew it had to be Graham. She pushed the door open and stepped into the room. She stood at the edge of the stretcher for a long moment, blinking back tears. Then she grasped the sheet in her hand.

"Emma?"

Startled, she dropped the sheet and whirled around. Mary Margaret had found her. "You shouldn't be in here," her roommate continued. Emma didn't move, and Mary Margaret, keeping her eyes focused solely on Emma, stepped into the room. "That's it, I'm taking you home."

The second she reached out for Emma's hand was the second Emma lost it. She wrenched away from Mary Margaret's grasp and glared at her. "You're the one who told me to let the wall down. And you know what? I did. I let it down … and this happened."

At first, Mary Margaret appeared surprised. Then she set her shoulders and looked at Emma with a strength and resolve Emma had never seen from her. "I'm sorry for everything that's happened tonight, Emma. If you want to talk about it, that's fine. If you want to yell at me, that's fine, too. As long as you don't keep everything to yourself anymore."

Tears brimmed in Emma's eyes. She took a deep breath to keep them at bay.

Though she still looked concerned, Mary Margaret heaved a resigned sigh. "You've had a really rough night. Will you please let me take you home?"

"Fine," Emma grumbled. Mary Margaret gave her a little smile and walked out of the room. After one last look at the bed, Emma followed her into the hallway.

Once again, they made the drive in silence. Emma stared out the window and watched Storybrooke pass by in a blur, oblivious to the concerned glances Mary Margaret kept throwing her way.

As soon as they set foot in the apartment, Emma headed straight for the shower. She set the water temperature as hot as she could stand and stood under the steaming spray, letting her mind wander. She'd been angry with him this morning. Angry and then concerned and then … hopeful. Hopeful that the chance she'd been about to take wouldn't end like the rest of them.

A couple of hours ago, she'd felt like maybe anything was possible. A couple of hours ago, she'd been ridiculously naïve.

Only after turning off the water did she realize that she hadn't brought a change of clothes or even a towel into the bathroom with her. "Really?" she muttered to herself.

She peeked out the curtain and discovered a towel, a pair of yoga pants, and a tank top sitting on the edge of the vanity closest to the door. Despite everything, a flicker of a smile tugged at her lips. Mary Margaret must have opened the door just enough to drop the stuff off for her.

After toweling off and changing, she exited the bathroom with the intention of crawling under the covers for about a week. That plan was shattered the second she smelled the hot chocolate. She followed the aroma to the kitchen, where Mary Margaret was pouring two mugs of cocoa. "Smells good," she said, her voice soft.

Mary Margaret smiled sadly as she pressed one of the mugs into Emma's hands. "I thought you might want some."

Emma nodded and took a sip. The cocoa warmed not only her throat but her entire body as well. She carried the mug over to the sofa and flopped down, letting the cushions envelop muscles she hadn't even realized were aching. Mary Margaret wordlessly sat down next to her. Which was fine; Emma didn't want to talk anyway. She sipped her cocoa, wishing she could wake up from the horrible nightmare that had been the past few hours.

The next thing Emma knew, Mary Margaret was standing in front of the sofa, taking the half-empty mug from her hand. "Hey, I was drinking that," she protested. Her voice sounded sleepy. Why was her voice sleepy?

"Stop fighting it and go to sleep," Mary Margaret whispered.

Sleep? Who the hell could sleep? She glanced to the side and noticed her pillow resting against the arm of the sofa. Where in the hell had that come from?

Not even three seconds later, she didn't give a damn that she had no idea why it was downstairs instead of up on her bed. It looked far too inviting to spend any more energy pondering its sudden appearance. She shifted position, resting her head on the pillow and stretching her legs across the cushions. Her eyelids fluttered shut only to fly open again when she felt Mary Margaret spread a blanket over her.

"It's all right," Mary Margaret soothed.

Emma nodded and allowed her eyes to slide closed again. Mary Margaret was quiet for a long beat before whispering, "Promise you won't shut me out, Emma. You don't have to be alone anymore. I can help you through this but you need to let me in."

Just before drifting off, Emma murmured, "I promise."


	6. Aftermath, Part 2

**Author's Note:** It took me for-freakin'-ever to get this chapter right because the characters kept taking it to angstier places than I was really comfortable with and it just ended up reading as melodrama for the sake of it. Seriously, I think this is like, version five or six. Yeesh.

* * *

A dream startled Emma awake, a dream she couldn't really remember. Remnants of details remained … whispers of conversation, echoes of screams, the steady whine of a flatlining heart monitor. Nothing she could weave into a cohesive story, though. From what little she could recall, Emma didn't think she wanted to remember the rest of it.

As she woke up a bit, memories of the previous night came flooding back. The fight with Regina in the cemetery, Graham following after her, taking her back to the station. The kiss and then …

Both her body and her heart were screaming at her to lie still with the covers pulled over her head, but she forced herself to sit up. She had to go to work. Her heart flip-flopped when she realized going to work meant returning to the place where Graham had …

But the department wasn't going to run itself and wallowing wasn't Emma's style. Getting up and _doing_ something would help keep her mind occupied.

As her eyes adjusted to the gray light of the early morning, she realized for the first time that she was not in bed in the loft but downstairs on Mary Margaret's couch. And if that wasn't surprising enough, Mary Margaret was sound asleep at the opposite end of the sofa with Emma's feet resting on her lap.

What in the hell had caused this turn of events? Oh, wait. She'd fallen asleep on the couch after returning home from the hospital the night before. But why was Mary Margaret out here with her? She couldn't remember. Taking care not to wake her roommate with her movement, she removed her feet from Mary Margaret's lap.

A quick glance up at the clock told her it was early – early enough that on a normal day, Emma wouldn't even consider getting out of bed yet. But this was not a normal day. Last night certainly hadn't been a normal night, and even though her body cried for more sleep, Emma didn't want to sleep anymore.

She pushed herself to her feet. With a glance at Mary Margaret to ensure she hadn't woken her, she tiptoed upstairs for a change of clothes before slipping into the bathroom. First on her agenda was a real shower. Her hair felt matted from sleeping on it when it was wet and she hoped that the hot water would help her shake off the remaining cobwebs from her restless night's sleep.

Her second marathon shower in the past twelve hours didn't refresh her completely but did leave her feeling a little bit better. She felt more awake, at any rate, which was good because she had a funny feeling that this was going to be a _long_ day.

When she exited the bathroom, she stopped short. Mary Margaret was already awake and starting on breakfast. The aroma of the brewing coffee usually made Emma's mouth water but this morning it was kind of turning her stomach. "Morning," she mumbled. She heard Mary Margaret return the greeting as she headed upstairs to throw her pajamas and towel in the hamper.

Well, now what? Emma had been hoping to get out of the apartment before Mary Margaret woke up. Mary Margaret would want to talk, and Emma didn't want to talk. She didn't like talking. Talking couldn't change a goddamned thing and it certainly didn't help.

She took a deep breath to prepare herself and went back downstairs, figuring she could slip out the door with a quick, "Hi, talk to you later, bye."

Of course, Mary Margaret had other ideas. She met Emma at the bottom of the stairs and handed her a mug of coffee. "How're you feeling?"

Emma just shrugged. She walked over to the counter and set the mug down. The aroma was definitely turning her stomach now.

"You know," Mary Margaret said gently, "you don't have to go in today."

"Yes, I do."

Her roommate's surprise was evident. "I'm sure no one expects you to–"

"Someone needs to keep the place running," Emma interrupted. Besides, she wanted to prove to Regina that Graham had known was he was doing when he hired her. If Emma left the station vacant, even on a day like today, it would not go over well in the slightest.

Though Mary Margaret nodded in deference to Emma's decision, her eyes betrayed her concern. "Do you want one egg or two this morning?" she asked as she placed a frying pan on the stove top.

"I'm not hungry."

"Emma, you need to eat."

"I'm not hungry," Emma repeated, her voice laced with a bit more edge and irritation.

"Will you at least have some toast?" Mary Margaret asked, undeterred.

All of a sudden, Henry's insistence that Mary Margaret was Emma's mother made perfect sense. Emma narrowed her eyes at her roommate. "I'm fine."

Mary Margaret inhaled deeply as fire flashed into her eyes, the same fire that Emma had seen the previous night in the hospital. "Forgive me for saying this, Emma, but you are not fine. You had nightmares all last night and I'm guessing you don't want to eat because your stomach is upset."

"I did not have …" Emma trailed off, trying to recall her dreams from the night before. She couldn't remember any nightmares in particular but what little she could remember did leave her very uneasy. Maybe she had been having nightmares. Who knew? Clearly, Mary Margaret did, because … whoa, wait. "Is that why you stayed on the couch? Because I was having nightmares?"

"Yes," Mary Margaret affirmed. "Nightmares and an upset stomach are understandable after what you've been through, Emma. I'm sure no one expects you to go into the station today. However, if you insist on working, your body is going to need some kind of nourishment."

Anger coursed through Emma's veins. Who gave Mary Margaret the right to do … whatever the hell she was doing? Emma hadn't asked for this. She didn't need someone to sit with her while she slept, she didn't need someone to make her breakfast, and she certainly didn't need someone to tell her when she needed to eat. She was not a child. She'd gotten along just fine prior to her arrival in Storybrooke, so what made Mary Margaret think she needed her now?

Just as she opened her mouth to argue exactly those points, Mary Margaret said, "I don't know if you remember, but you made me a promise last night."

Emma hadn't remembered, not until Mary Margaret reminded her. She vaguely remembered telling Mary Margaret she promised but she couldn't recall what Mary Margaret had said to elicit that response.

"You promised you wouldn't shut me out," her roommate continued, her voice gentle.

All of a sudden, Emma was very uncomfortable with this entire conversation. "I was half-asleep," she said in what she hoped was a dismissive tone. "I probably would have promised to look for pots of gold at the end of rainbows on Mars with you if you'd asked."

A flicker of disappointment crossed Mary Margaret's face. She held Emma's gaze for a moment before letting the conversation drop and focusing on breakfast. She set slices of bacon in one pan before whisking an egg in a bowl and dropping it into the other pan.

"It's up to you, of course," Mary Margaret said after a long beat of silence. "I'm not saying you have to fall to pieces, Emma. I'm just saying, wouldn't it be easier to have someone to talk to? Someone who'll listen? I know you're used to it, but you don't have to deal with things on your own anymore. I'm here, if and when you need me."

Emma felt tears burning behind her eyes and closed them to keep the tears at bay. She'd only cried once over this, and she'd be damned if she was going to start crying again now. When she opened her eyes, she saw that Mary Margaret had returned her attention to breakfast. She'd gotten the egg onto her plate and was now removing the bacon from the pan.

"I kissed him," Emma blurted, then blinked in surprise. She hadn't meant to say that at all. She'd meant to tell Mary Margaret that she could make some damn toast if it was so freaking important to her. A little more politely, of course.

Mary Margaret looked up at Emma, her eyebrows raised in surprise. She clearly hadn't expected that revelation, either. "You kissed him?"

Emma nodded. "Just before he … we were actually going in for the second one when …"

"Oh, Emma, I'm so sorry," Mary Margaret said, briefly closing her eyes in sympathy. "Is that what you meant last night when you said you let the wall down?"

"Yeah," Emma replied, wincing at the memory of that moment in the hospital. "I shouldn't have. Let the wall down, I mean."

"You can't think like that."

"Why the hell not?"

Mary Margaret gave her a tender smile. "Were you happy? Ignore everything that came afterwards for a second and just focus on the kiss. Even for a brief moment, were you happy?"

Tears once again burned Emma's eyes as she realized that for a little while there, she had been happy. When Graham cupped her face in his hands, grinned at her, and thanked her for who knew what, she hadn't been able to help smiling back at him. She'd been petrified and nervous and a little confused, but underneath it all, she'd been happy.

She blinked quickly and nodded at her roommate. Mary Margaret's soft smile grew a little wider. "That's why not. You both took a chance and it made you both happy. Would you rather have not had that at all?"

Squirming uncomfortably, Emma looked away. She didn't know how to answer that question. Being happy, even that for one little moment, was wonderful but it also made everything that much more painful.

"All right, let's go with an easier question," Mary Margaret said, her tone gentle. "Can I please make you some toast? You have a long day ahead of you and you need to eat something."

Emma sighed. Mary Margaret was obviously not going to let this go, so she might as well just give in. "I guess you can make me some toast."

Mary Margaret's smile was grateful this time. "Well, it's a start."

All of a sudden, Emma had an overwhelming feeling that Mary Margaret wasn't just talking about toast anymore. To be honest, Emma didn't know if her concession was just about the stupid toast, either. _Damn_, she thought.


	7. Skipping Stones

**Author's Note:** I'm sitting at work during an approaching hurricane. As you can imagine, it's a rather slow day here, heh. But at least you guys get to benefit from my slow day with a new chapter. ;) Stay safe, East Coasters!

* * *

Emma's first day back at work after Graham's death was torturous, but the second day wasn't as bad as the first, and the third was easier than the second. Over the course of the next couple of weeks, she settled into something of a routine. She tweaked the phone system, setting it up so that emergency calls got forwarded to her cell while non-emergency calls went to an answering machine. That afforded her freedom to leave the station, whether for patrols or to get lunch or to go out on a call.

The one thing Emma had yet to do was move the stuff from her desk in the bullpen to the desk in the office. In her mind, it was still Graham's office. She felt a twinge of guilt every time she needed to rifle through the desk drawers or the file cabinets to find something.

Whether Regina was sadistically responding to Emma's obvious discomfort or she really needed the stupid things, Emma didn't know, but she seemed to delight in sending Emma into the office to look for some file or another. Once she even told Emma she'd left a rather expensive pen on the sheriff's desk and she absolutely needed it back as soon as possible. Emma had gone through every drawer and hadn't found a single sign of a pen more expensive than a Papermate. When she'd called Regina back to let her know she couldn't find it, Regina claimed to have found it in her own desk in the meantime.

After the citizens of Storybrooke elected her sheriff – which she still couldn't believe had happened, by the way – Emma realized with a pang of sadness that she would have to move into the office. She'd avoided it for another couple of days, figuring she could start moving the stuff around on Monday.

Today, though, was Sunday. Emma had managed to clear her schedule for the first time in a very long couple of weeks, and she was looking forward to doing not much of anything at all.

She figured she'd last about an hour before she got bored.

Mary Margaret had just handed her a mug of cocoa when the walkie-talkie crackled to life with a burst of static and then Henry's voice. "Emma. Come in, Emma."

With a perplexed frown in Mary Margaret's direction, Emma grasped the device. Usually Regina kept the kid on a tight leash on Sundays. Mary Margaret shrugged as if she had no idea what was going on as Emma pressed the button to answer her son. "What's up, Henry?"

"That's not proper walkie-talkie lingo, over," came the chastising reply. Mary Margaret clamped a hand over her mouth to muffle her amused snort.

"Henry," Emma chided with an indulgent roll of her eyes.

They both heard him heave a sigh into the speaker. "Can you meet me at the castle in thirty? Over."

Emma smiled. She absolutely could meet him at the castle in thirty. She looked up at Mary Margaret to make sure it was okay with her if she left for a little while. Her roommate had been making noises about perhaps giving her another cooking lesson today. When Mary Margaret nodded her assent to the silent question, Emma mouthed, _Thank you_. "Rodger that," she said to Henry.

"That's much better! Out."

With another teasing roll of her eyes, Emma set the walkie-talkie back down on the counter. "Sorry to leave you by yourself this morning," she said to her roommate.

"It's quite all right," Mary Margaret assured her. "I have some things I need to get done anyway."

Something in Mary Margaret's tone brought Emma up short. As Emma had noted before, Henry was a long way from being able to fake nonchalance to someone who made a living catching people in lies, and Mary Margaret wasn't that much ahead of him. Not to mention the fact that she hadn't seemed all that surprised when Henry requested a meeting on a Sunday.

The two of them were definitely up to something. Emma narrowed her eyes, trying to figure out how to worm information out of her roommate.

Actually, no. Of the two of them, Henry would be easier to break. Deciding not to let Mary Margaret know she suspected anything, Emma pushed herself away from the counter. She grabbed her jacket before heading out the door and leaving Mary Margaret humming along to "Crimson and Clover." The radio was still tuned to oldies, and irritatingly, the damn songs were beginning to grow on Emma.

By the time Emma reached the castle, Henry was already waiting for her. She climbed up onto the play structure and plopped down next to him. "So, what's so important that we needed to meet here?"

"Nothing, really," Henry said with a shrug. "My mom's out until dinnertime so I thought we could hang out for a while."

Oh, yeah, he and Mary Margaret were definitely up to something, something that involved getting Emma out of the apartment for a decent length of time. Otherwise he would have an actual plan for their day. But what on earth could the two of them be planning that required Emma's absence?

Aw, shit. Was it a surprise party or something? Emma freakin' _hated_ surprise parties. "Okay, kid, out with it. What are you and Mary Margaret up to?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Henry said with a tilt of his head.

"Don't make me use my superpower on you," she said sternly. "Is it a surprise party?"

"I still have no idea what you're talking about."

His voice was a little shakier this time, and Emma knew she was at least on the right track. "Seriously, Henry, is it a surprise party? I hate surprise parties and I really don't want Mary Margaret wasting her time on–"

"It's not a surprise party with people or anything," he finally relented. "She's making your favorite meal and baking some cupcakes. It's her way of congratulating you on being elected sheriff. We're eating early so I can join you guys before going back home. Just don't tell her I told you, okay? I said I wouldn't tell."

A touched smile tugged at Emma's mouth. She'd never had anyone make a special meal in her honor before. "I won't tell her you told me."

Henry let out a breath of relief. "Thank you. She said I had to keep you busy for a couple of hours but I honestly have no idea what you want to do."

Actually, neither did she. Their hanging-out activities typically revolved around food … going out for ice cream, making pizza, baking cookies with Mary Margaret. It was too early to take the kid for food, not to mention it would ruin their appetites for their early dinner.

She glanced over her shoulder at the shoreline and suddenly got an idea. The water was a little choppy, which would make the lesson a little bit more difficult, but she could try it.

"Come here," she said, giving Henry a sly grin as she jumped down off the castle to the rocky gravel below.

"What? Why?" Henry climbed down off the play structure the proper way and followed Emma to the water's edge. He watched in confusion as she bent down and rooted around the rocks at the shoreline.

By the time she stood up straight with two flat rocks in her hand, Henry understood. "You know how to skip rocks?" she asked him as she handed him one of the stones.

He shook his head. "I've tried but I've only ever made one skip once."

"Well, I'm going to try to teach you," she told him. "You're supposed to do it on a calm surface and this water's a little rough, so it might not work the way I want. But we can give it a shot. What do you say?"

"Yes, please," Henry grinned.

"All right, watch this." Emma curled her finger around her stone and tossed it out into the water. It skipped three times before sinking below the surface. Not her best; she'd have to use a little more force to overcome the roughness of the water.

"Awesome," Henry murmured, his voice low in amazement.

"Now let's see you try," Emma said.

The second Henry whipped the rock into the water, Emma knew what he was doing wrong. "Not overhand," she said, handing him another stone. "Underhand, like a softball. Here, hold it like this."

She picked up another rock and used it as a visual, showing him the proper grip on the stone. Then she told him to watch her hand as she threw. The rock skimmed the surface five times before going under. _Much better_, she thought, grinning to herself.

Henry copied her motions and got his stone to skip twice. "Yes!" he cried, raising his hands over his head in victory. "Can we try some more?"

"You bet."

The kid proved to be a quick study. Once he got the hang of the technique, he challenged her to a race. The choppy water made the distance-hopping difficult but neither of them seemed to care. "How did you learn how to do this?" Henry asked after she'd won the third distance challenge in a row.

"Matthew," she replied, the memory bringing a smile to her lips.

"Who's Matthew?"

The chill of the air near the water had begun to get to Emma. She wandered back over to the castle and sat down on the wooden structure. Curious, Henry followed and plopped down facing her. The eagerness on his face as he awaited story time struck her as rather adorable.

"Matthew was a little boy in one of my foster homes. From what I remember, that house was actually one of the nicer ones. There were only a few of us and we each had our own rooms. Anyway, I had just turned six, and I followed Matthew around everywhere. Because when you're six, eight-year-olds are so much cooler and smarter than you can ever hope to be. Other kids would have been annoyed with a tag-along little foster sibling, but not Matthew."

"You sound like you liked him a lot," Henry said with a gentle smile.

"I did," Emma admitted. "I'd already begun to learn that the people in these houses were not and never would be my family. Even still, I really wanted Matthew to be my big brother, and I'm pretty sure he really wanted me to be his little sister."

She hadn't thought about Matthew in years. She'd tried to find him on a few separate occasions but she couldn't remember his last name or the names of the foster parents. Without those names, the search was practically impossible. "Anyway, there was a little creek in the woods behind the house that led to … it wasn't even big enough to be a pond, I don't think. It was just this tiny body of water. That's where he taught me how to skip stones. Sometimes he'd bring along sandwiches and we'd just stay there for hours."

"But you didn't stay together," Henry prompted when she let the story drop.

She sadly shook her head. "He got assigned a different social worker, who moved him out of the house. I have no idea why."

"And you ended up leaving that house, too?"

This time, she just nodded in response. After Matthew left, Emma had started acting out in an effort to get moved with Matthew. To her little six-year-old self, it had made perfect sense. To her foster parents, however, she'd become unmanageable, and they'd requested the move because they'd had no idea what else they could do to help her.

"It was all a long time ago," she said to Henry, shaking herself back to the present. She forced a smile and pushed herself to her feet. "It doesn't matter anymore. We still have another couple of hours before we can go back to the apartment, so it's your turn to think of something to do."

Henry started to say something but then closed his mouth and shrugged instead. "I don't know."

"What were you going to say just now?"

"Well," he said, squirming uncomfortably, "I just remembered that I'm in the middle of a game of Oregon Trail, but it's on your computer at the station."

All of a sudden, Emma understood the kid's hesitance. He hadn't been to the station since everything had happened with Graham. "Well, it's up to you, but you know something? Facing it helps."

"It does?"

"It helped me," she admitted. "If I hadn't had to go back there to do my job, I don't think I ever would have gone, but I'm glad I did. It would have been harder the longer I put it off."

Henry took a deep breath as he considered Emma's words. Then he nodded and slipped his hand into hers. "Okay. Can we go to the station, then?"

"Absolutely." She smiled at him and squeezed his hand. He returned both the smile and the squeeze before letting go and taking off ahead of her.

Emma followed closely behind him, thinking. Images of Matthew and Graham and all the other people who'd come into her life filled her mind. All these people she'd known for about a minute before they left her, for whatever reason.

At least Henry and Mary Margaret didn't seem to be going anywhere for a while. And suddenly Emma realized that she was lucky she'd found them. Or, in Henry's case, she was lucky he'd found her. That little voice inside her once again reminded her that maybe she belonged here with them.

For once, she found herself agreeing with it instead of ignoring it.


	8. Late Night Conversation

Emma thanked whatever higher power was out there that the apartment was in almost-darkness when she stepped back inside. Mary Margaret had left a lamp on in the living area so that Emma wouldn't enter to complete darkness, but the curtain drawn across the doorway to her room indicated she'd gone to bed. Letting out a soft breath of relief, Emma closed and locked the door behind her.

The slice of pumpkin pie Henry had bought her had only served to make Emma realize just how hungry she was. She crossed over to the fridge and peeked inside. There was the plate Mary Margaret had left her as promised. With a slight grin, Emma pulled the plate off the shelf …

"This one was hard on you."

… and almost dropped the whole damn thing on the floor. She spun on her heel in the direction of the voice, her free hand flying to her chest to cover her pounding heart. "You just scared the crap out of me!" she cried at Mary Margaret, who must have come out of her room when she heard Emma poking around in the fridge.

Emma wondered how feasible it would be to attach something to the woman's clothing so she would hear her coming next time. Like the bells on cat collars to warn birds.

"Sorry," Mary Margaret cringed. She flicked on the overhead light. At first, Emma squinted against the sudden brightness but once her eyes adjusted, she appreciated not having to look at her roommate through the dim light provided by the lamp and the open fridge.

Now that she'd recovered from her mini-heart attack, Emma gave Mary Margaret a little smile to let her know that she was okay. Then she took her plate over to the microwave to reheat.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mary Margaret take a seat at the table. Aw, crap. Why couldn't the teacher have been asleep by now? Because she was right, of course. The whole thing with Ava and Nicholas had been hard on her, and Emma could tell that Mary Margaret wanted to talk. She seemed to be quite a big fan of the talking thing. Emma, to put it mildly, wasn't as much of a fan of the talking thing.

The worst part about talking with Mary Margaret, though, was the way Mary Margaret managed to get Emma to open up even though Emma ranked talking somewhere between chewing on broken glass and listening to fingernails on a chalkboard. With a simple look, Mary Margaret had a way of making Emma spill. Well, as much as she ever spilled with anyone. Emma didn't understand it, and she definitely didn't like it.

And she _really_ didn't want to talk about everything that the situation with Ava and Nicholas today had dredged up for her. At all.

She'd kind of been hoping that she could sneak in, heat up her leftovers, and go upstairs to stew over everything for a while until she finally fell asleep. Clearly, that was not meant to be.

The microwave dinged, startling Emma back to the present. Now she had a choice: bid Mary Margaret a quick good night and carry her plate upstairs, or take the plate to the table and face the conversation her roommate wanted to have like a mature adult.

With an internal groan, she sat down at the table. Being a mature adult really freaking sucked sometimes.

"I'm not trying to pry," Mary Margaret said when Emma got herself situated, "so by all means, tell me to shut up if you want."

Oh, Emma wanted. She wanted so freaking hard, but she couldn't seem to make herself tell Mary Margaret to shut up. Mary Margaret was so earnest and gentle and kind and … well, Mary Margaret. Telling her to shut up would be like telling a grandmother to shut up: just _wrong_. "It was hard on me, all right?" Emma asked around a bite of chicken. "There, I admitted it."

And there was that wise look in Mary Margaret's eyes, the one that sometimes made Emma think that Mary Margaret knew her better than she knew herself. That look was extremely unfair. It made her uncomfortable and it made her squirm but for some reason it also made her _want_ to tell Mary Margaret everything that was on her mind. She set her fork down with an exasperated sigh. "It's just … taking an interest? It's not that hard. Hell, it's what decent people do."

Mary Margaret gave her a gentle, understanding nod. "And why couldn't you have had that, right?"

Emma shrugged half-heartedly. "The system is broken, Mary Margaret. The social workers have too many kids to keep track of and the 'parents' – and believe me, I use that term loosely – know exactly what to do and say to keep the money coming in. The second a kid becomes even the slightest bit of trouble, they're packed up and shipped off to be someone else's problem."

Upon spying the increasingly horrified expression on her roommate's face, Emma cringed. "Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there are people who sign up for it because they genuinely want to help. It's just that the good ones are few and far between. Most people who actually want to raise kids want babies or toddlers. The longer you're in the system, the more likely you are to stay in it."

Now Mary Margaret looked positively stricken, which made Emma frown in confusion. Why did the hardships of Emma's past matter so much to her? "Were any of the places you were in the good ones?"

"Some were better than others," Emma admitted. "Some of the adults did try. I wasn't the easiest kid, had a bit of an attitude."

"You?" Mary Margaret asked, her light tone filled with mock disbelief. "I can't imagine."

Emma gave her a small smile that turned bitter after a moment. "The point is, none of them cared enough. They couldn't connect with me and didn't want to put in the effort to figure out why, so it was on to the next place. And when you're little, you wonder, is it me? Maybe I'm just not worthy of love and affection. Then you get older and you understand that of course you're worthy and it's the adults who are wrong. The same adults who expect you to treat them with respect when the only thing you are to them is a check in the mail every month."

"That's terrible," Mary Margaret murmured. She reached up over the table as if to grab Emma's hand but then stopped herself, crossing her hands in front of her instead. "Every child deserves to know that they're wanted, that people care for them. That they have a place in this world."

For reasons Emma didn't quite understand, hearing those words come out of Mary Margaret's mouth made a lump form in her throat. "You would have been one of the good ones," she told her softly.

A gentle smile lit Mary Margaret's eyes. "I'm sorry that the people who were supposed to help failed you, Emma. That never should have happened."

There again was that idealism of her roommate's: the notion that the world operated fairly, that people looked out for each other simply because it was the right thing to do. It was such an innocent worldview that it practically killed Emma to say, "It happens more often than you want to know."

Mary Margaret took a deep breath and held it for a moment. Emma was expecting more sympathetic noises regarding the state of the foster system, so it came as a complete surprise when Mary Margaret said, "You know, for someone who pretty much raised herself, you did a great job."

Emma blinked, both at the suddenness of the shift in conversation and in confusion. "Huh?"

At first, Mary Margaret looked confused that Emma was confused. Then sudden understanding softened her features. "You care," Mary Margaret explained. "You look at kids like Henry and Nicholas and Ava and even Ashley and you want to fight for them. Because you know how it feels to be alone and to have no one to stand up for you, and you don't want any other child to go through what you went through."

Emma grew more and more uncomfortable with each passing second. Much like talking, introspection was not a thing that she liked, and having people force her to get introspective made her squirm.

Giving Emma a kind smile in an attempt to set her at ease, Mary Margaret continued, "You have no idea the strength of character that takes. Plenty of people have had far more pleasant childhoods and still grew up to be angry and bitter adults."

"I have my angry and bitter moments," Emma mumbled, tearing her gaze from Mary Margaret's. She stared down at her plate and wondered why she was reacting this way. How screwed up was this? She was actively trying to talk someone out of paying her a compliment.

"Yes, of course you do," Mary Margaret agreed. "Everyone does, but the point I'm trying to make is that they are just moments. You're not an angry and bitter person on the whole."

She wasn't? She sure felt angry and bitter a lot of the time. Whenever she allowed herself to think about it all, anyway.

But Mary Margaret wasn't done. "No one would have blamed you if you'd become one but you didn't. You took that anger and that pain and you turned into empathy instead of apathy."

Huh, Emma had never really thought about it like that before. She chanced looking up at her roommate. She needed to watch her face when she asked, "Do you really see me that way?"

"I wouldn't have said it if I didn't believe it, Emma."

Emma didn't see a tell. Mary Margaret didn't look away, didn't bite her lip, didn't furrow her brow as she spoke. All Emma saw was sadness flicker into her roommate's eyes for a brief moment. Sadness that Emma couldn't see herself the way Mary Margaret apparently saw her.

She swallowed hard – that damned lump had come back – and gave Mary Margaret a small smile. "Thank you." Mary Margaret smiled back.

Emma picked up her fork so she could finally eat and was grateful when Mary Margaret changed the subject. Being a mature adult still kind of sucked, but Emma supposed it was okay every once in a while if something good came out of it.


	9. Back to Square One

Mary Margaret ran out of the apartment, babbling something about a science fair and a volcano. Without even batting an eye, Emma let her go. Of course, there was no science fair or volcano. However, Mary Margaret clearly didn't feel like sharing why she was rushing out the door. She only would have made up something else along the teacher-duty lines if asked.

Emma didn't know whether she was more curious as to what Mary Margaret was up to or hurt that her friend hadn't confided in her.

Whatever was going on, it was obviously Mary Margaret's business. That still didn't stop Emma from following her. It wasn't like she put a tail on her or anything; Emma just stayed a few paces behind her roommate as she headed to … Granny's? What the hell?

Emma watched Mary Margaret get herself situated. Then David walked into the diner, and Emma all of a sudden understood.

She winced at the look in Mary Margaret's eyes when David stopped to chat. Why couldn't her roommate see that all she was doing was setting herself up for heartache? David bid her goodbye before walking back out to his car and his wife, and Emma stepped out of the shadows to talk to Mary Margaret.

Emma spent the rest of the day preparing Storybrooke for the storm and questioning that – ridiculously cocky, if she did say so herself – stranger on Regina's request. The guy had somehow managed to get her to agree to go out for a drink without even telling her his name! Emma typically didn't do drinks with a guy who wouldn't offer up his name. But hey, a free drink was a free drink, and the man was … intriguing, if nothing else.

She arrived home that night soaked to the bone from the pelting rain. As soon as Emma opened the apartment door, she smelled the simmering soup. She inhaled deeply, wondering how Mary Margaret always knew what meal would perfectly end each day. A day like this in Boston would have ended with Chinese takeout because Emma wouldn't have had the patience to even heat up a can of Campbell's.

Emma had just hung her coat on the hook when the power went out, leaving the apartment in darkness. "_Damn_ it," Emma muttered. "Really?"

She was surprised to hear something similar come from her roommate's bedroom. If Emma wasn't mistaken, that was the first time she'd heard Mary Margaret swear. Before she could even open her mouth to ask if her roommate was all right, her walkie-talkie crackled to life. "Come in, Emma! Emma, do you copy?"

She grasped the device from her jacket. "I copy, Henry. What's going on?"

"Did you lose power, too? Over."

"Yeah, all of Storybrooke is probably out. I'll call the electric company and make sure they're on it. You all right, kid?"

"Yeah, I'm okay." Emma heard the rustle of … something over the speaker, then Henry came back on, his voice softer. "Sorry, Emma, I have to go. My mom's calling for me. Out!"

She tucked the walkie-talkie back into her jacket pocket with an indulgent shake of her head. Still, she was grateful the kid had made contact. Brief though it was, at least it let her know he was okay and that he was home safe with Regina.

Now it was time to focus on Mary Margaret. "Mary Margaret? Are you okay?" Emma called as she slowly started to make her way across the apartment.

"Yes," came Mary Margaret's exasperated voice through the darkness. A moment later, she exited her bedroom carrying a candle in one hand and a flashlight in the other. "It's just that the soup was dinner. Well, the soup and some sandwiches."

"What do you mean, was?" Emma asked, taking the flashlight from Mary Margaret's hand. She set it on the counter, pointed at the ceiling. It didn't provide a lot of light but at least the two of them could see each other. "It smells delicious."

"It still needed about another thirty minutes or so to simmer, and now it won't taste right."

Emma frowned; the despair in Mary Margaret's voice struck her as a tad unwarranted for the situation. "It's warm," she said in an attempt to get her roommate to smile. "It'll be perfect."

Mary Margaret didn't smile or look in any way convinced. Emma couldn't be quite sure in the flickering candlelight, but she looked seconds away from tears. Growing concerned now, Emma asked, "Hey, is everything all right?"

With a quick nod, Mary Margaret busied herself with pulling bowls down from the cabinet. "It's just been a really long, really weird day," she said as she ladled soup from the slow cooker into the bowls.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Emma asked as Mary Margaret slid a bowl to her across the counter.

Clearly, Mary Margaret hadn't expected that. She blinked at Emma before nodding and carrying both her bowl and the candle to the table. Taking a heavy breath, Emma snatched the flashlight and followed her.

She listened as Mary Margaret described her day, starting with finding the injured dove. When Mary Margaret reached the almost-falling-off-a-cliff part of the story, Emma interrupted with, "Whoa, back up!"

A zillion questions poured from her mouth, first and foremost being, "Are you okay?" Once she got her affirmative answer, the second question was, "And why the hell am I just hearing about this now?"

Mary Margaret patiently answered all of Emma's questions before continuing. By the time she got to the part about the moment in the cabin with David and the release of the dove, Emma had closed her eyes in sympathy. "Oh, holy crap."

"That about sums it up, yes," Mary Margaret sighed.

She sounded so defeated that Emma wished she could go kick some sense into David Nolan right this very second. Threats of violence against the object of her heart's desire probably would not sit well with Mary Margaret, so all Emma said out loud was, "I'm sorry, Mary Margaret. You do know that it's for the best this way, though, right? He needs to figure out his own life before he can even hope to–"

"I know," Mary Margaret interrupted. She nodded, then looked up at Emma with sad eyes. "But knowing doesn't make it any less painful."

No, it most certainly did not. Unfortunately, Emma didn't know what to say to set Mary Margaret's mind at ease. The only thing that dulled pain from heartache like this, Emma knew from experience, was time. Time, and keeping her mind as occupied as possible.

"It'll hurt less in time," Emma said, her voice soft. Mary Margaret did not look at all pleased with the prospect of waiting it out. "And in the meantime, you can talk to me."

That got Mary Margaret to smile, at least.

Since Emma had already suggested earlier that Mary Margaret not run out the door to Granny's in the morning, she decided she didn't need to repeat it. Not quite in those words. "So, here's what I think we should do," she said, trying to keep her voice light. "If I'm not mistaken, you still have some whiskey left. I say we have our soup and sandwiches, have a drink or two, and then in the morning, we make it a point to eat breakfast together. Or at least help each other soothe our respective hangovers."

Mary Margaret shot her a pained but grateful look and nodded her agreement.

And they did just as Emma suggested. The power came back on at some point during the night. Neither of them woke with a hangover but they still ate breakfast together. Well, Emma ate. Mary Margaret just stared off into space while twisting her ring around her finger.

Emma frowned and followed her gaze to the wall clock. Upon seeing the time, she understood. Then she did something she hadn't done in ages, if at all: she reached out, grasped Mary Margaret's hand, and squeezed. At first, Mary Margaret started at the contact but then she looked grateful. Emma gave her a tiny smile in return.

After they – well, Emma – finished breakfast, they both took off for work at the same time.

Emma arrived home later that evening to find Mary Margaret happily humming something familiar as she pulled ingredients out of the fridge for dinner. Just as she was about to ask what had caused her roommate's sudden change of mood, her Mary-Margaret-and-Henry-fueled crash course in popular songs from the 1960s kicked in and the song clicked.

_Oh_, no.

"Just leave the past behind, and baby, only think of how it is today."

Mary Margaret was singing under her breath, but it was loud enough for Emma to know she had the song pegged: "Sign of the Times" by Petula Clark.

Emma hoped against hope that it was simply the last song Mary Margaret had heard and was thus stuck in her head. The blissful look on her face, however, said otherwise. Something must have happened between her and David during the day, something that had completely reversed all of yesterday's decisions.

And the only thing Emma could think was, _Aw, crap. This is _not_ going to end well._


	10. Bad Day

Emma had lived through many a shitty day in her time but today? Today was the shitty day to end all shitty days.

Hell, that city council meeting alone would have been enough to leave her craving a beer or two. Regina banning her from seeing Henry after the meeting raised the stakes from beer to hard liquor. Being the one to have to tell Henry that she couldn't see him until Regina deigned to allow a visit? That elevated hard liquor to getting absolutely shitfaced.

Because now it was no longer about winding down with liquid comfort after a cruddy day. Oh, no. A day like this required oblivion.

She'd shared a couple of drinks with Sidney, who then stood up to leave, making noises about having somewhere to be. He promised to get back in touch with Emma once he'd done a little more digging. Emma told him she couldn't wait and then gestured for Ruby to bring her another drink.

She cut herself off after that, not because she was done but because she needed to be sober enough to get back to the apartment. She could continue in the privacy of her own – well, Mary Margaret's – home. The sheriff getting hammered in the diner wouldn't be the best example to set, not to mention that she'd had enough public humiliation for one day.

Emma really could have driven back to the apartment but Storybrooke was small enough that the walk didn't take her much longer than the drive would have. Upon her entrance, Mary Margaret's warm smile of greeting quickly dropped into a frown of concern. "Is everything okay?" she asked as Emma shrugged off her coat.

"Not even close." Emma grabbed a juice glass from the cabinet before taking the whiskey down from the shelf and plopping down at the kitchen table.

Her concern grew as Emma filled the glass almost to the top and left the bottle on the table. "Do you want to talk?"

"Nope." Emma took a sip. The alcohol burned all the way down to her stomach. It felt wonderful. "I just want to forget it for a little while."

"That doesn't sound like the healthiest of options, Emma."

"Don't care."

Mary Margaret looked like she had more to say on the subject but she either thought better of it or realized it would do no good. Instead, she took a seat at the table across from her roommate.

Emma groaned inwardly. Why the hell couldn't Mary Margaret just let her get drunk in peace?

Not to mention that the longer she sat there, the more likely Emma was to tell her what was going on, just to fill the awkward silence. Forgetting it all for a while would be a lot harder if she had to talk about it.

That tiny little voice pestered Emma again, telling her that Mary Margaret could help. That drinking it away was only a temporary solution that would leave her feeling worse in the morning. That letting it out would be painful upfront but would be better for her in the long run.

Another gulp of whiskey shut the stupid thing right up.

Or so Emma thought. A few seconds later, it was back to nag at her. Mary Margaret sitting there with her nagged at her, too. Not that Mary Margaret was being a nag. As a matter of fact, she was being the exact opposite. All she was doing was waiting patiently in case Emma decided to talk instead of drink.

Well, she could sit there all night, because Emma had no desire or will to talk. Which was why she was shocked when she heard herself say, "So, turns out Regina didn't take the money for herself. She took it to design and build a new playground."

"Oh, Emma." Mary Margaret's voice was filled with sympathy, and Emma wasn't quite sure whether she was comforted or annoyed. She didn't want sympathy. She wanted righteous anger. Luckily, Mary Margaret wasn't done. "But she still took the money, right? It's still embezzlement."

"It doesn't matter," Emma grumbled. "I didn't put together that paper trail in the most legal of ways. I came off looking like a vindictive bitch who simply wanted to ruin her in any way I could, and she came off looking like a saint who just wanted to keep Storybrooke's children safe. And if that wasn't bad enough, after the meeting she banned me from seeing Henry. Until further notice, which, knowing her, means until he's seventy."

The expression on Mary Margaret's face was so kind and gentle that Emma felt herself relaxing. "No wonder you wanted to drink."

"Oh, I haven't even told you the worst part." She glanced down and discovered with surprise that her glass was half-empty. When the hell had that happened? She gave a slight shake of her head and looked back up at Mary Margaret. "Guess who had to tell the kid that we couldn't see each other."

"She left it for you to tell him?" Mary Margaret looked scandalized on Emma's behalf, which made Emma want to hug her.

Whoa. Okay, so she wasn't really going to hug Mary Margaret but the alcohol was clearly beginning to work its magic.

"If you could have seen the look on the kid's face …" The memory of Henry's dejected expression filled her mind and before she knew it, another gulp of whiskey was warming her throat. "He looked like I just told him that someone ran over his dog."

"She can't keep the two of you separated forever," Mary Margaret said gently.

"Want to bet?" Emma scowled, leaning back in the chair. "What kills me is, she's not wrong. I screwed up and now Henry has to pay the price for it."

"She _is_ wrong, Emma," Mary Margaret told her. "You may have been wrong about her taking the money for her own purposes but she's using Henry to punish you. That's not fair to you and it's especially not fair to him."

That, Emma realized, was exactly what was making her so upset. By withholding contact, Regina had turned Henry into some kind of prize that could be won or lost. He was a kid, damn it, not an object. A kid with feelings. "Yeah, well, fair or not, she's doing it."

Mary Margaret remained silent as Emma drained her glass. When she went to refill it, Mary Margaret slid the bottle out of her reach. "Hey!" Emma cried, sudden anger darkening her eyes.

Her roommate stood her ground with an adamant shake of her head. "She _wants_ this, Emma. She wants to get under your skin, she wants to upset you, but you know what? She can only make you miserable if you let her."

Though Emma desperately wanted to argue, she found that she couldn't. Her head had begun to spin and her inner voice had started telling her that Mary Margaret was right. That she was giving Regina too much power and that being miserable wouldn't accomplish anything other than, well, making her miserable.

Eventually, she gave Mary Margaret a silent nod and pushed her glass away. The teacher smiled at her before grabbing the glass and taking it over to the sink.

A crackle of static from the walkie-talkie startled both of them. "Come in, Emma." Henry's voice was a harsh whisper, just barely audible over the static.

Emma started to push herself to her feet only to have a head rush force her back into the chair. _Damn_. A juice glass full of whiskey caught up with her _fast_.

Mary Margaret's concern was obvious but she wordlessly got up, grabbed the walkie-talkie, and brought it to her roommate. Emma gave her a grateful smile before addressing Henry. "Hey, kid," she replied, keeping her voice quiet. The last thing she needed was Regina to catch them communicating despite the ban.

"I just wanted to say good night," he whispered. "I don't know when we'll get a chance to talk again."

Emma didn't know, either, and it killed her. "I'm glad you got a hold of me tonight. Sleep tight, Henry."

"You too, Emma. G'night."

She set the walkie-talkie down on the table with a pensive frown. He hadn't used radio lingo like he normally did or chided her for her lack of radio lingo. Damn, the poor kid was supremely bummed out.

Truth be told, so was Emma.

Mary Margaret's voice startled Emma back to the present. "You all right?"

"I will be," Emma sighed.

A gentle smile spread across Mary Margaret's lips. "Well, that's wonderful but I meant in the more immediate sense. Do I need to get your pillow and a blanket and set you up on the couch, or–"

"No, I'm okay."

"Really? You want to try standing up again?"

Emma wrinkled her nose at her friend's teasing. She most definitely did not want to try standing up again. "Like I said, I will be."

The indulgent smile on Mary Margaret's face betrayed her resigned sigh. "I'll go get your pillow and blanket."

By the time Emma thought to tell her that getting her stuff wasn't necessary, Mary Margaret was halfway up the stairs. Oh, crap, the stairs. Maybe Mary Margaret going up to get her stuff was necessary after all. Those stairs would be Emma's mortal enemy right about now.

Perhaps mixing alcohols like that was not one of the five best ideas Emma had ever had. The morning was totally going to suck.

_Then again_, Emma thought as she watched Mary Margaret set up the couch as comfortably as possible for her, _maybe it won't be so bad_. She already felt a little bit better about the day. Well, not better, exactly, but certainly more able to put it behind her.

The stubborn, independent part of her swore it was the alcohol but her inner voice told her that talking with Mary Margaret had helped far more than the whiskey.

That little voice, Emma decided, was beginning to become a royal pain in the ass. Because like it or not, it had an irritating tendency to be correct.


	11. Smoky

They had thirty minutes together, and Emma didn't intend on wasting any of it.

Of course, the fact that Regina had given her thirty minutes with Henry in the first place was cause for suspicion. Even as she and Henry left the station, Emma couldn't help straining her ears in an effort to hear what Regina could possibly be discussing with Gold. Unfortunately, Henry pulled her down the hall before she could hear much more than the murmur of their voices.

Damn.

Oh, Emma knew that this was emotional blackmail, but she didn't care. Not at the moment. She could care later, once Regina had taken Henry home and Emma had gone back to wondering when she was going to see him again.

Right now, her focus was the kid and the kid alone. "Do you want a cone or a dish?" she asked him as they made their way to Granny's.

"Both," he replied with an emphatic nod.

"Oh, no," Emma said, shaking her head. "I'm very glad to see you and I'd kind of like these visits to continue. I don't think allowing you to get two orders of ice cream will endear me to your mom."

Not that anything Emma did would endear her to Regina and not that Emma really cared what Regina thought of her. It was just that Regina held all the cards at the moment. For Henry's sake, she was trying not to rock the boat any more than necessary.

"No, it's not like that," Henry said with a laugh. "There's a new flavor. It's vanilla or something with ice cream cone pieces mixed in. I want to have that in a dish."

Emma let out a breath of relief. "Oh, okay. That we can do. You want hot fudge?"

"Duh." A smile on his face, Henry latched onto Emma's hand.

She pretended not to notice the leap of her heart or the way she tightened her hand around his almost instinctively. "Well, forgive me for not catching the obvious, but I do believe the last time we got sundaes together, you asked for caramel sauce."

"Oh, yeah! And you had death by chocolate! That you didn't finish."

Emma groaned at the memory. One thing was for certain: there would be no death by chocolate today. That was just entirely too much chocolate for her.

They stepped into the diner and grabbed a corner booth. Henry ordered his ice cream cone sundae with hot fudge, whipped cream, and a cherry. Emma decided to keep it relatively simple with chocolate chip ice cream and peanut butter sauce.

"You're not going for thirty-seven kinds of chocolate today, Sheriff?" Ruby asked with a smirk.

Emma just sighed. She was never going to live that sundae down, was she?

While they waited for their ice cream to arrive, Henry chattered on about this and that. Since they hadn't talked for a while, everything came out in a rush.

Apparently, he'd aced his math test ("fractions aren't as hard as everyone says they are") and he had started to do some research for his science project on pendulums. He asked Emma if she'd ever seen the big pendulum at the Museum of Science when she lived in Boston and seemed disappointed when she answered in the negative.

Talk soon shifted to the book and wondering where it could have gone. When he lowered his voice and asked whether she thought someone else could have found out about Operation Cobra, Emma felt the need to stop him before he placed a second shooter on the grassy knoll. "I'm sure no one else found out about Operation Cobra. The book will turn up when you least expect it. You just have to believe. If there's one thing I know you can do, it's believe."

Henry's pensive frown quickly turned into a grin. The grin widened when Ruby returned to the table with their sundaes.

Emma and Henry spooned their cherries off the whipped cream and buried them under the ice cream at the same time. The only difference was Emma had had lots of practice and Henry hadn't. She snickered when melted ice cream dribbled over the edge of his dish. "Clean up your mess, kid," she said, handing him a couple of napkins.

"Oops," he said with an embarrassed chuckle. He took the napkins from her and began wiping up the spill. "How do you get the cherry to the bottom without spilling your ice cream?"

"Magic," she replied with a wink.

Henry grinned at her before popping a spoonful of sundae into his mouth. "Hey, Emma, can I ask you a question?"

"Sure."

"Have you ever had a pet?"

Emma almost choked on her ice cream. Where in the world could this line of questioning possibly be headed? "Why?"

"I don't know," he said with a shrug. "I've never had one. I just wondered if you've ever had one."

She relaxed a bit when she realized that the kid had no ulterior motive beyond making conversation. For a heart-stopping minute there, she thought he was setting her up to ask Regina to allow him to get a pet. As if she could see _that_ happening. "No," she answered but then a memory surfaced. She frowned. "Well, maybe. Sort of."

"Sort of? How do you sort of have a pet?"

Honestly, Emma had forgotten all of this until he asked. She met his eyes, gave him a tiny smile, and settled in for a bit of storytelling. "I kind of had a cat when I was eight. She was this little gray thing that lived in the woods behind the house I was staying in. She didn't have a collar but she wasn't wild, either. I don't know if she ran away from her family or if the family had abandoned her or what. I … I don't know, I guess I felt bad for her. She didn't know me – didn't trust me – and wouldn't let me come near her. So I started leaving my tuna fish out for her. I didn't like it so rather than throw it away, I gave it to the cat."

"If you didn't like tuna fish," Henry quietly interrupted, "how come you kept getting it?"

"That's the only thing my foster mother made for us," she said with a rueful smile. "We got it whether we liked it or not. Some of the kids ate it anyway but I just couldn't. I even hated the way it smelled. I'd eat the bread on the days I was really hungry but most of the time, I'd give the whole thing to the cat. Once she learned that I didn't want to hurt her, she started coming up to me even when I didn't have any food for her. I named her Smoky."

A gentle smile spread across Henry's lips as he undoubtedly pictured a teeny tiny Emma playing with a little gray cat. "Did you get to keep her?"

Emma shook her head. "I couldn't get her anywhere near the house, but even if I could, my foster parents wouldn't have allowed her inside. That didn't matter to me, though. I'd go to the edge of the woods with a book or something and she'd sit with me. She liked to play with rubber bands so I'd bring some every so often for her to chase."

"She sounds fun," Henry said softly.

"She was. I even took her with me the night I ran away."

The kid's eyes widened. "You ran away?"

Aw, crap! She hadn't meant to tell him this part of it! From the questioning look on his face, however, she knew there was no getting out of it now. Shit, shit, _shit_. "Okay, first things first. If you want the rest of this story, you have to promise me you will _never_ do what I'm about to tell you I did."

"I promise." He reached his hand across the table, pinky finger outstretched. "Cross my heart."

She narrowed her eyes at him for a beat. He appeared genuine, so Emma latched onto his pinky with hers. If she remembered correctly, pinky swears were the most solemn of all kid promises. "Yes, I ran away," she replied, leaning back in the booth. "I was eight, remember, so all I really did was pack a backpack with my blanket and one measly change of clothes and take off into the woods. It was summertime so we were all playing outside after dinner. No one saw me slip away with Smoky following me. From what I heard later, my foster parents didn't even know I was gone until I didn't come down for breakfast the next morning."

"What happened next?" Henry asked when she let the story drop, lost in memory.

"My foster parents called the police. One of the cops found me sound asleep at the base of a tree with Smoky curled up under my arm. He brought me back to the house but things were never the same after that."

"Why not?"

"I'd accidentally gotten my foster parents in trouble," Emma replied with a shrug. "It didn't sit well with the other kids' social workers that I was gone over twelve hours before they realized it. My social worker ended up moving me a few weeks later."

"And you never saw Smoky again?" Henry frowned.

"Sometimes I think I did," she said. "A couple years later, I was placed in a different home in the same neighborhood. Every so often, I'd catch glimpses of a little gray cat. Maybe it was Smoky, maybe it wasn't. I like to think it was, though."

Henry smiled at her. "I think it was, too."

While she had been telling the story, Henry had not only finished his own sundae but had also started poking at hers. A glance at the clock on the wall told Emma they needed to be heading back to the station. Getting Henry back late would be pushing her luck. "Come on, kid, we have to go."

After Emma paid for the ice cream, she and Henry began the trek back to Regina. It didn't escape her notice that both their paces were slower than when they had left the station. "Emma?" he asked.

"Yeah?"

He slipped his hand around hers and squeezed. "I missed you."

This time, she tried to ignore both the leap of her heart and the fluttering in her stomach. "I missed you, too." And she had. She hadn't realized just how much she'd missed him until she saw him. "But don't worry. We'll get to see each other again soon."

"I hope so," he sighed.

_Me too, kid_, she thought, tightening her grip around his hand for a brief moment. _Me, too_.


	12. The Difference a Day Makes

In the back of her mind, Emma had known it was only a matter of time. Between Mary Margaret's implicit trust in just about everybody and all the not-so-sneaky sneaking around she and David had done, it had to come to a head sooner rather than later.

That said, Emma had fervently hoped that circumstances would prove her wrong, if only for Mary Margaret's sake. Nothing was worth what Mary Margaret was going through at the moment.

Someone not wanting to talk, Emma knew how to handle. Hell, she was the queen of not wanting to talk. Not wanting to be alone while not wanting to talk, though, was something entirely out of her comfort zone. Emma was much more solitary, preferring to lick her wounds in private and emerge to face the world once she'd gotten a better handle on the situation. As such, she had no friggin' clue what the hell she was supposed to do to help someone who didn't want to be alone.

But this was Mary Margaret. This was the woman who'd opened up her home to a stranger without hesitation and had taken Emma under her wing in more ways than one. She'd tunneled her way under Emma's wall so slowly and patiently that Emma hadn't even known it was happening. To Emma's complete surprise, Mary Margaret had become her best friend, and her best friend's world was crashing in on her. Emma had to try.

She settled down on the empty side of the bed, hoping she was doing this whole comforting thing correctly. Mary Margaret didn't move but she didn't tell her to get up, either, so she stayed. She had no idea what her next step should be and hoped that her presence would be enough.

It struck Emma as cruel how the same twenty-four-hour period could be so nice for some people and so devastating for others. Take her own day, for example. Her drink "date" (not that she _wanted_ to label it as such but whatever) with August W. Booth – and _finally_ the guy had a name – had been … interesting, to say the least.

She didn't quite know what to make of that guy. On the one hand, he was cocky and very big into the whole faith and belief thing. Emma didn't do faith. She was a pragmatist. Evidence and facts were nothing to shake a stick at, after all. Plus, in her experience, taking things on faith tended not to end very well. On the other hand … well, she certainly had never had a guy take her to a picturesque wishing well in the woods on a "date" and it _was_ good water.

Then there was the matter of Henry's book showing up out of the clear blue sky. That was just … odd. The explanation she gave Henry about it falling off the trash truck – the only thing she could think of that made any kind of sense – required a hell of a lot of serendipity. Then again, she supposed that stranger things had happened. Either way, the look on the kid's face when she gave the book back to him had made it all worth it. His grin had brightened up his whole face and it practically killed her to have to leave before Regina caught them together.

Yeah, now that she thought about her, her day had been really nice. The same, however, could not be said for poor Mary Margaret.

Emma turned her head and glanced over at her roommate. She hadn't moved but the rhythm of her breathing made Emma sit up a little bit. She peeked over Mary Margaret's shoulder and smiled sadly. Sure enough, the teacher had cried herself to sleep.

Thinking that maybe she should find a blanket or something for Mary Margaret, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed. Mary Margaret whimpered in her sleep, causing Emma to freeze. Had the slight bounce of the mattress when Emma moved disturbed her?

Slowly, she lay back down. To her surprise, Mary Margaret calmed. Well, now what? She supposed she could give it another little while, let her roommate fall into a deeper sleep before she tried moving again.

Lying there in the semi-dark, Emma let her mind wander. Though Mary Margaret hadn't told her what had happened, Emma had heard bits and pieces through the Storybrooke grapevine. The sheriff of a small town could hear all kinds of things if she listened hard enough.

The rumors flying around town were enough to make anyone want to run and hide until things calmed down. Poor Mary Margaret was wholly unprepared for the sudden turn her life had taken. She'd obviously never had to learn how to ignore whispers and stares and sideways glances.

Although, speaking of the Storybrooke grapevine, where the hell was the anger at David? Last Emma checked, it took two people to carry on an affair. David Nolan was just as culpable as Mary Margaret. Seeing him get off mostly scot-free while Mary Margaret shouldered the lion's share of the blame made Emma angrier than words could say.

Something else had happened, though, Emma was sure of it. The utter devastation in Mary Margaret's voice could not simply be from the affair becoming public knowledge. The teacher's heart was broken, for what Emma could only assume was the first time.

She hadn't noticed that her own eyes had slid shut until she felt herself drifting. Crap, maybe she should try getting up again …

The next thing she knew, a gentle hand was shaking her awake. "Mary Margaret?" she asked groggily. "Is everything okay?"

"Yes." The defeated tone of her voice betrayed her words. Emma swiped her hand over her eyes in an effort to wake herself up a little bit. "I just thought you might be more comfortable in, you know, pajamas."

Emma glanced down at her jeans and top and realized that her roommate had a point. She also noticed for the first time that Mary Margaret had changed out of her clothes and into pajamas herself before curling back up on the bed. "I'm all right for now. How are you doing?"

"Not so all right," she answered honestly. The little smile she gave Emma didn't quite reach her red-rimmed eyes. "I think I just want to go back to sleep and deal with it in the morning."

That feeling, Emma understood very well. "Sounds like a plan," she said softly.

"Thanks for staying with me, Emma," Mary Margaret said as she closed her eyes. "It helped more than you know."

She had been planning on going upstairs to her room but her friend's words tugged at her heart. She couldn't leave her alone. Not yet.

Sighing quietly, Emma climbed off the bed and tiptoed out of the room only to return a few moments later with the blanket she'd meant to get a couple of hours ago. She carefully spread the blanket over her roommate, whose eyes fluttered open at the action. "What're you doing?"

"Staying with you until you fall asleep," Emma replied as she reclaimed her spot on the bed. Her breath caught in her throat when Mary Margaret turned to face her and grasped her hand. She hadn't expected that but even more surprising was the fact that she hadn't instinctively pulled away. "I promise I won't pass out on you this time."

"S'okay if you do," she murmured, her eyes drifting closed again.

Emma didn't answer, mostly because she knew Mary Margaret wouldn't have heard her anyway. She waited until her roommate's grip relaxed before gently slipping her hand free. When Mary Margaret didn't flinch, Emma knew she was in a deep enough sleep that she could go up to her own room.

She slowly got up from the bed and drew the curtain closed behind her on her way out of the room. As she climbed the stairs to the loft, she prayed that Mary Margaret would feel better in the morning. Heartache sucked but it would be less painful for her in time. The townspeople would forget the affair the second a new scandal captured their attention. And in the meantime, anyone who gave Mary Margaret even the slightest bit of crap would have to deal with Emma.

Would locking anyone who dared to antagonize the teacher in one of the holding cells for an hour or two be an abuse of power? Probably. Then again, Emma didn't think she cared all that much whether it was an abuse of power or not.

She changed into what passed for pajamas before climbing into bed. After listening to make sure that nothing was coming from downstairs, she curled up under the covers and closed her eyes. Tomorrow was a new day, and it had the potential to be a much better one for Mary Margaret.

_After all_, Emma thought as she drifted off to sleep, _how could it possibly get any worse?_


	13. Evidence vs Faith

The tough thing about being a sheriff was that a cop's good fortune only came from someone else's misfortune. Take the disappearance of one Kathryn Nolan, for example. Having some actual investigative work to do certainly was more exciting than, say, going out on one patrol after another only to find all of Storybrooke peaceful and quiet. It just sucked that in order to have some work that Emma could sink her teeth into, people's lives had to be ruined.

Not that Emma wanted to believe that David Nolan had had anything to do with his wife's disappearance. She couldn't tell, however, whether she didn't want to believe it for her own sake or for the sake of her roommate.

Part of it was that she couldn't ignore Henry telling her that David was her father. Emma didn't put any stock in Henry's fairy tale theories, of course. Fairy tales were just that. They were fantasy, pure escapism. They were a natural, deeply human response to happy endings being so few and far between in this life.

That said, Henry also insisted Mary Margaret was Emma's mother and look how that turned out. Not that Emma really believed that Mary Margaret was her mother. They were the same age, for crying out loud; unless one or both of them were close, personal friends with Doc Brown, Mary Margaret being Emma's mother was physically impossible. However, she did have to admit that she felt more comfortable with Mary Margaret than she did with anyone she could remember. Certainly anyone in her adult life.

So maybe underneath all the kid's fairy tale babbling was some kind of awareness into people's personalities and which people would get along well with each other. Maybe that meant she and David would have some kind of special connection, too.

If she could get past the whole he-broke-her-best-friend's-heart thing. And that was a pretty big if.

There was also the matter of Mary Margaret's interest in David. Her emotions were already fragile where he was concerned. Emma didn't even want to hazard a guess what it would do to the teacher if it turned out that David had had something to do with any of this.

When she questioned him at Kathryn's abandoned car, Emma noted with a bit of relief that he seemed just as clueless about what could possibly have happened as Emma herself. Her cynical side told her he could be faking but her gut didn't get that from him at all. He simply didn't have the tells of a liar, not even the subliminal ones, the ones most people can't control. David Nolan did not strike her as the type to be such an accomplished liar that he could control the subliminal tells.

So she'd let him go, telling him she would get back in touch when she had new information.

Since gut instinct would in no way hold up in a court of law, Emma still had to follow through with the investigation into David's whereabouts at the time of Kathryn's disappearance. Stranger abductions were not as prevalent as the movies and television made them out to be; most often, the victim knew his or her abductor. The spouse that had been having an affair that had recently become public knowledge certainly fit prime-suspect criteria.

When the phone records Sidney had managed to procure for her showed a phone call from David to Kathryn, Emma's heart dropped into her stomach. How in the hell could he have played all the stuff at the car so well that she hadn't seen through his lies?

By the time she got him to the station, though, she felt more comfortable with her first instinct. David looked sucker-punched when she showed him the phone records. The fact that he had absolutely no explanation for the call actually worked in his favor, as far as Emma was concerned. If he really had done something to Kathryn, he surely would have known that Emma would pull his phone records and find out about the call. He would have had a story to cover it.

Also working in David's favor was that he agreed to allow Emma to fingerprint him. She'd told him it was for exclusionary purposes but they both knew she would be using them to potentially tie him to any evidence that turned up.

She'd once again let him go, though this time she suggested he might want to think about retaining a lawyer. Her instincts would mean exactly nothing against a paper trail, circumstantial though it was.

When she returned home after filing her report and jotting down some notes on the case, Mary Margaret met her at the door of the apartment. "Why did you take David down to the station? Did you really have to do it in front of everybody? What happened? Is he okay? Did you hear anything about Kathryn?"

Emma's head was swimming from the sheer amount of frantic questions Mary Margaret had lobbed at her. "Whoa, one question at a time." She eased the door closed, set the lock, and shrugged off her coat. "I can't discuss the details with you, Mary Margaret. All I can tell you is that the evidence was pointing a certain way and I had questions I needed answered as soon as possible."

She hung her coat on the hook and turned back to her roommate. She expected Mary Margaret to have backed up a little but she hadn't. "Did you get your answers?" she asked, clearly not pleased with Emma's non-answer to her own questions.

"Yes and no. I didn't arrest him, if that's what you're asking."

Relief flooded Mary Margaret's face. "He didn't do anything, Emma. He couldn't."

Truth be told, Emma believed the same thing. She still had to go where the evidence led her, though, and it was leading her to David. "Look, I'm not trying to be rude or difficult or whatever, but this is an ongoing investigation and I really can't discuss it with you. That rule exists to protect not only the integrity of the investigation but David as well."

Mary Margaret's eyes widened for a brief moment. Then she nodded sheepishly at Emma. "Of course. I'm sorry, Emma. I'm just worried … for everyone."

"Yeah, me, too," Emma said pointedly. If David was a suspect, so too was Mary Margaret, at least in the court of public opinion. Sidney had already brought up the possibility – although Emma had shut him down within a fraction of a second – and he couldn't be the only one thinking like that.

Emma wasn't just worried for her friend. She was freaking _terrified_ for her.

Mary Margaret was either too worried or too worked up to catch Emma's underlying meaning. She simply backed off, finally letting Emma step away from the door.

The discovery the next day that David was suffering from blackouts certainly put a wrinkle in the case. If he was losing time, he still could have done something to Kathryn during the missing time and Emma's first instincts would have been correct. The only thing was he'd sounded so distraught at the thought that he _could_ have done something that Emma still didn't believe that he did.

That gut feeling had only grown when Ruby found the heart in the box. Whether or not the heart was Kathryn's – although, who else could it have belonged to? – carving out a human heart and burying it in an ornate box went beyond cold-blooded and ventured into psychotic. David Nolan just did not strike her as the type who could do such a thing. Yeah, Emma may have wanted to kick him a couple of times during his and Mary Margaret's relationship but stringing someone along was a far cry from murder and vivisection.

Ruby had been beside herself after the gruesome discovery, not that Emma blamed her in the slightest. Instead, Emma told her she could leave if she wanted, and Ruby darted for the door. If it had been a cartoon, she would have left little puffs of smoke in her wake. After taking pictures to document the find, Emma began processing the box for evidence.

The outside of the box had been wiped clean of prints but there was one stray print left on the underside of the lid. Grinning at her good fortune, Emma lifted the print and compared it first with David's.

No match. Emma let out a breath of relief that she hadn't even been aware she'd been holding.

Her next steps was to run the print through the computer. As the software ran its comparison with the town's database, Emma had the wicked thought that it would be really interesting if it matched Regina. Not that Emma wanted that for Henry, of course, but she had to admit that the thought of stomping into the mayor's office to arrest the woman for suspicion of murder was more than a little satisfying.

A beep from the computer startled her back to reality. The software had found a possible match. Unfortunately, it was not Regina.

The color drained from Emma's face as she stared at the name on the screen. No, no, no, this could not be right. Since it was Emma and not the software who made the final determination, she superimposed the two images and held her breath.

_Shit_! It _was_ a match. A pretty damn good one, too.

She stared at the monitor for a lot longer than she should have, trying to collect her thoughts, trying to find some kind of justification to say that the almost flawless match was not good enough. Because there was no way in hell that this could be true.

Mary Margaret Blanchard was _not_ a killer. She didn't even believe in killing bugs that found their way into her apartment, for Christ's sake! She would catch a bug in a Dixie cup and set it free out the window instead of using Emma's method of squishing the thing in a napkin. No friggin' way she could carve out the heart of another human being.

Plus, the night Kathryn disappeared was the same night Emma had stayed in Mary Margaret's room until she fell asleep. If Mary Margaret had gotten out of bed later that night, Emma was certain she would have heard her. She was a heavy sleeper, yeah, but she didn't sleep deeply enough to not hear her roommate getting up to go freaking _kill_ somebody.

But it didn't matter what Emma knew. Just like when she thought that David hadn't done anything, she had to follow where the evidence led.

_Huh_, she thought, _I wonder what August would say about this_. Here she was, with evidence staring her in the face, and she wanted nothing more than to operate on faith.

But she couldn't. She had to find Mary Margaret. She had to freaking _arrest_ Mary Margaret.

"Shit," Emma murmured as she pushed herself to her feet. This? Was going to suck out loud.


	14. The Arrest

**Author's Note:** We've reached part of the season provides a metric ton of material for me to play around with, so I'm splitting it up into smaller chunks. That way I can give each little unseen moment the attention it deserves. :)

* * *

The one thing Emma could not bring herself to do was handcuff Mary Margaret. Her hand had automatically flown towards the clip on her belt but her heart skipped a beat at the thought of slapping the metal cuffs around her best friend's wrists. No, she couldn't do it. She just couldn't. She closed her eyes for a brief moment before bringing her hand to Mary Margaret's shoulder instead and giving a light squeeze. "I have to ask you to come with me."

A jumble of emotions flickered across Mary Margaret's face as she shrugged Emma's hand away. Confusion, anger, fear, indignation. It was the betrayal in Mary Margaret's eyes that caused Emma's stomach to flip-flop, her heart to pound, and her knees to shake. "Emma, you know that I–"

"Please, Mary Margaret," Emma begged. _Don't make this harder than it is_, she silently added. She'd tried to inject her voice with some semblance of comfort but her request had come out too soft, too pained to be of any consolation to the teacher.

David Nolan, who had stepped in front of Mary Margaret as if telling Emma she had to go through him first, caught the sheriff's gaze. His own eyes widened in comprehension when he spied the pain swimming in hers. Understanding now that she didn't want to be doing this any more than he or Mary Margaret wanted to allow her to do it, he gave Emma a tiny smile.

For some reason, Emma felt comforted. Not all the way – this still sucked hardcore ass – but just enough to take the edge off, to make her knees stop feeling like jelly.

David turned to face Mary Margaret. "It'll be okay," he murmured into her ear. "It's Emma. She'll take good care of you."

Mary Margaret spun her head around and faced David with the same look of anger and betrayal she'd given Emma. They stared at each other for a long moment, carrying on some kind of silent conversation that Emma couldn't even begin to interpret. Eventually, Mary Margaret nodded at David before stepping forward and holding out her hands, palms up, for the sheriff to cuff.

And still, Emma couldn't do it. Her shaking hand refused to reach for the handcuffs. It already had done so once and her heart had overruled the motion. This time even her head was overruling her training. "You're coming quietly," she said, looking Mary Margaret in the eye. "I don't think the cuffs are necessary."

"Thank you," Mary Margaret said through a breath of relief.

Emma nodded while praying to any higher power that may have been listening that no one would catch her transporting a suspect with no restraints. As she reached around Mary Margaret to lay her hand on the small of her back, she gave David a smile of gratitude. There was no way she would have been able to convince Mary Margaret to cooperate so easily on her own.

David smiled back and in an instant, Emma understood that he trusted her completely. Trusted her to take care of Mary Margaret and to make this as painless for her as possible. Trusted her to get to the truth.

And Emma would. There was simply no other option.

As sheriff and teacher made their way out to the patrol car, Emma read Mary Margaret her rights. Luckily for the both of them, there was no one around to watch her get Mary Margaret settled in the back seat. When she closed the door, though, she winced at how loud it sounded in the stillness of a Storybrooke afternoon.

By the time Emma walked around to the driver's side, her hands had started to shake even more violently than before and her stomach was roiling. She paused with her hand on the door handle, trying to regain control. She didn't want Mary Margaret to see how upset she was.

It took one deep breath and then another for Emma's stomach to calm and for her hands to stop shaking. She opened the door and climbed in, more than ready to get the hell out of the public street and back to the privacy of the sheriff's station.

She wouldn't be able to stop the Storybrooke grapevine, of course. Word would get out sooner rather than later. She just wanted to spare Mary Margaret from it as much as possible.

Emma had barely gotten the door closed when Mary Margaret started in with the denials. "Emma, this is crazy! First you accused David and now you're accusing _me_?"

Her stomach lurched again as her lunch threatened to make a second appearance. "I'm actually not _accusing_ either one of you," she told Mary Margaret, looking up at her in the rearview mirror. "I know you didn't do anything."

"Then why are we even doing this?" she asked helplessly.

"Because I have to." Emma's voice was apologetic as she turned the key in the ignition.

"Emma, there is no conceivable way–"

"I know," Emma repeated, "but that fingerprint was a match to you. I checked it myself. You have no idea how much I wanted it to be a false positive, but it's not."

"How did you even get my prints anyway?"

That brought Emma up short. "I'm assuming you're in the database because you're a teacher. Didn't you get fingerprinted when you started at the school?"

Mary Margaret frowned in thought. "No," she said after a long moment. "I mean, I don't think so. I don't remember getting fingerprinted, anyway."

Huh. If Mary Margaret wasn't printed when she started her job, how in the hell had her prints ended up in the database? And why didn't she remember it? Getting fingerprinted wasn't such an everyday occurrence that one typically forgot it. That was certainly a mystery but there were more pressing things at the moment, like getting the hell out of public view.

With a quiet sigh, Emma piloted the car onto the road and headed for the station.

"Emma?"

The voice from the back seat was small and fearful instead of frantic. Emma's heart twinged. She wanted nothing more than to turn the car around and drive Mary Margaret back to the animal shelter and to David. "Yeah?"

"How bad is this?"

Emma took a deep breath and held it for a long moment. "On a scale of one to ten, I'd say maybe a three. It's one print on a box. Nothing we found at the scene ties to you. We have no murder weapon, no body … we don't even know if the heart is Kathryn's. I'm not going to lie, Mary Margaret, the next few days are going to be uncomfortable for you, but we're a long way from …" She trailed off, trying to figure out a way to say "a murder conviction" without scaring the hell out of her friend.

"Sending me up the river?" Mary Margaret supplied, her tone as light as she could manage.

A tiny smile curled onto Emma's lips. "I don't think anyone says that outside of old gangster movies but yeah."

Mary Margaret swallowed hard, nodded, and sat back in the seat. Emma refocused her attention on the road, and the rest of the trip was made in silence.

No one was around when Emma pulled into the sheriff's station parking lot. She had no idea what she or Mary Margaret had done in either this or a past life to deserve this much cosmic grace, but she was not about to question it. She cut the engine and turned around in the seat to face her friend. "What we have to do next isn't going to be pleasant. I assume you've never gone through the booking process before?"

Though Mary Margaret was clearly terrified, she managed to arch a sarcastic eyebrow at Emma. "You assume correctly."

Emma briefly explained the process to her so there would be no surprises. "Look, I know this is overwhelming but I just want you to know that you can trust me. It may not seem like it right now but I do have your best interests at heart."

_Because no one else would fight like hell to clear you the way I will_, she thought but couldn't bring herself to say out loud.

For a long moment, Mary Margaret didn't say a word. She stared down at her hands before looking up and searching Emma's face. Finally meeting her best friend's gaze, Mary Margaret gave her a big a smile as she could muster. "I do trust you."

Emma smiled back before pushing the door open and climbing out of the car. As she walked around the back of the vehicle, she set her shoulders. Mary Margaret _trusted_ her. Mary Margaret, who'd just had her implicit faith in other people rocked in one of the worst ways possible, found it within her to trust Emma with, essentially, her life.

And Emma was determined not to let her down. She was not about to be the one who destroyed Mary Margaret's idealism for good. It would require a bit of digging, of course, but Emma was more than willing to dig to the freaking center of the Earth and back if it meant getting Mary Margaret out of this mess.


	15. An Unexpected Complication

Emma discovered with a some disappointment that there was no quiet way to close a jail cell. She'd tried to ease the door closed as gently as possible but the metal still clanked into place. She and Mary Margaret both jumped at the sound. Emma met Mary Margaret's eyes with an apologetic grimace.

Even the sound of the key turning in the lock was deafening. Emma winced, then gripped the bars and looked through them at Mary Margaret. The teacher had eased down on the cot with her back against the wall, her knees pulled to her chest and her arms around her legs. She looked so small and vulnerable that Emma had the overwhelming urge to pull the door open while apologizing profusely and telling her that it had all been a terrible mistake.

"I'm so sorry for this, Mary Margaret," Emma murmured, loosening her grip on the metal.

"It's not your fault," her roommate shrugged.

Emma had finally explained that she had to do things by the book or she risked Regina stepping in. Mary Margaret now seemed to understand that Emma was doing her very best to protect her but it clearly didn't make the whole sitting in a holding cell on suspicion of murder thing any easier.

Oh, why the hell couldn't that print have matched Regina? Again, not that Emma wanted that for Henry, but … it certainly would have been easier for her to handle.

She swallowed hard, closing her eyes for a brief moment. She knew it wasn't her _fault_, per se, but the fact remained that she had just locked her best friend in a jail cell even though she knew she hadn't done a goddamned thing to Kathryn. "Are you okay?" she asked. Mary Margaret flinched and Emma quickly amended her question. "As okay as you can be under the circumstances, I mean?"

Though Mary Margaret was clearly terrified, she nodded in response to Emma's question.

"All right," Emma said through a heavy breath. "I have to file some paperwork before we ..." _Before I have to ask my best friend a mountain of hard questions. _"Before we move on to the next step. It's going to be okay, Mary Margaret."

Again, Mary Margaret just nodded in response.

Emma's breath caught in her throat. She wished she knew what the teacher was thinking. More than anything, she wanted to be able to find the words to bring back Mary Margaret's smile and the sparkle in her eyes. But comfort wasn't her strong suit, and other than rewording her promise to get to the bottom of this, she couldn't think of anything else to say.

Nothing she said would change Mary Margaret's reality anyway. She was stuck in that damn cell until Emma got her out.

The shrill ringing of the telephone startled the both of them. Emma gave Mary Margaret one more apologetic smile before running over to the desk in the bullpen. She managed to snatch the receiver just before the machine picked up. "Sheriff's station."

"Ah, Sheriff Swan." Emma cringed when she heard the mayor's tinny voice through the earpiece. "Just the person I was looking for."

"Obviously," Emma muttered. Who the hell else did she expect to pick up the phone in the sheriff's station? "What do you want, Regina?"

Regina uncharacteristically let the verbal sparring drop and got straight down to business. "Have you interrogated Miss Blanchard yet?"

For the third time in an hour, Emma's stomach roiled. She'd known it was coming, of course, but hearing it spoken out loud like that made it real. She was going to have to _interrogate_ Mary Margaret.

Interrogation was such a harsh word; Emma had no intention of going all bad-cop on her best friend. Interviewing Mary Margaret, Emma could handle. Interrogating her, not so much. "Not yet," she answered softly. "I was going to file my paperwork first."

"Good idea," Regina said. Emma blinked in surprise. A compliment from the mayor? She glanced out the window, fully expecting to see pigs floating past. "You'll have it ready for me when I come down there, then."

It was just Emma's luck that she had taken a sip of coffee right as Regina spoke. She miraculously managed to avoid spitting it out but choked on the liquid instead. "Excuse me?" she sputtered. "No, wait, hold on a second."

Before Regina could protest, Emma pressed the Hold button and slammed the receiver back down on the base. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mary Margaret regarding her with a confused frown but she didn't have time to stop and explain. She flew to her office, flopped down in the chair, and picked up the extension. "Why the hell are you coming down here?"

"I do not appreciate being put on hold, Sheriff Swan."

"You were on hold for all of five seconds, Regina."

"And that was five seconds too many."

Emma rolled her eyes. "Why are you coming down here?"

"To sit in on the interrogation, of course."

"You want to sit in on the interrogation," Emma repeated. "Why would I let you sit in on the interrogation?"

"Let me make one thing clear," Regina said, her tone turning harsh. Harsher than normal, at any rate. "In any other jurisdiction, you would have been pulled off this case so fast your head would have spun. Are you telling me you don't see the conflict of interest here?"

"I am more than capable of doing my job without my own personal opinions getting in the way," Emma replied evenly.

Emma could hear the smirk in the mayor's voice when she replied, "Then you won't mind me coming down and sitting in on the interrogation."

"Am I wrong, Madame Mayor? Isn't Kathryn Nolan a friend of yours?" Emma retorted. "Talk about a conflict of interest. How do I know you're not simply looking for _someone_ to go down for the crime, no matter who it is?"

There was a pause on the line and Emma wondered if she'd once again rendered the mayor speechless. Unfortunately not, for Regina soon said, "From where I'm sitting, Ms. Swan, we both want the same thing: to find out what happened to Kathryn."

Emma groaned inwardly. She was not going to be able to talk Regina out of this, was she? Mary Margaret was nervous enough; the last thing she needed was Regina Mills sitting in the room while her best friend asked her the hardest questions she'd probably ever have to answer.

On the other hand, Regina sitting in would provide third-party confirmation that Emma had conducted the interview properly. That way, when Emma cleared Mary Margaret – and she would clear her, no doubt about that – no one could say that she'd cleared her simply because they were friends.

Regina's presence might make Mary Margaret uncomfortable for a few minutes but it would help her out in the long run. Not to mention that it didn't appear that Regina was leaving her much of a choice. "Fine. What time were you planning on stopping by?"

If Regina caught onto to her faked pleasant tone, she didn't say so. "I can be there in about fifteen minutes."

"I guess I'll see you in fifteen."

Emma hung up without giving Regina a chance to get in a parting shot. Of course, she'd probably pay for hanging up on the mayor in fifteen minutes when Regina showed up at the station. Still, it was worth it.

She took a moment to compose herself before heading back out to Mary Margaret. The teacher would more than likely want to know why Emma had taken the call in her office, and Emma wanted to get her anger under control before she told her.

After another deep breath, Emma pushed herself to her feet and stepped out of her office. "Is everything all right?" Mary Margaret asked, her brow furrowing in concern. "You looked angry."

"It's fine," Emma replied. She started to tell the teacher about Regina sitting in on the interview but the expression on Mary Margaret's face stopped her. She looked extremely uncomfortable and was clearly overwhelmed just by sitting in a jail cell. Telling her that Regina, who made no bones about the fact that she didn't particularly care for either one of them, was joining them for the interview would not be helpful.

_Oh, Mary Margaret, please forgive me_, Emma thought as she sat down at the desk. "It was just Regina. She's coming down here for my report in about fifteen minutes."

"Of course," Mary Margaret nodded. She let out a heavy breath as she leaned her head back against the wall and shut her eyes, leaving Emma to her work.

Emma worked in silence for a few minutes before glancing up at her friend. "Mary Margaret?" The teacher lifted her head and looked over at Emma. "I know it doesn't feel like it at all right now, but everything's going to be okay. I just … I need for you to believe that."

It took Mary Margaret a moment to answer. "I do believe that. I believe you."

Hearing that was both thrilling and kind of terrifying for Emma. She gave Mary Margaret a little smile before buckling down and getting back to work. She had ten minutes now to get her paperwork done. The last thing she wanted was for Regina to have any cause to believe she wasn't doing her job to the best of her abilities.

Mary Margaret's freedom depended on it.


	16. Answers Only Bring Up More Questions

"Holy ..." Henry murmured, his voice low in shock and amazement. "Emma, that's a–"

"I know what it is, Henry," Emma muttered. She wrapped the knife back up in the rag and set it on the floor. She stared down at the bundle, trying to wrap her head around a bigass hunting knife being hidden in Mary Margaret Blanchard's heating vent.

"Is that … you know, _it_?"

_It_. The murder weapon. She may have discovered a murder weapon with her ten-year-old son.

Emma raised her eyes to Henry, swallowing hard. Honesty or sugarcoating? Opting for honesty, she said, "I can't be sure until I send it out for some tests." Someone sure wanted her to think it was, though. With a heavy breath, she pulled out her cell phone and began snapping pictures of both the knife and the heating vent.

His nose wrinkling in confusion, Henry crossed the room and crouched down next to her. "Miss Blanchard didn't do this."

"You're preaching to the choir, kid," Emma replied almost under her breath. She just could not picture meek little schoolteacher Mary Margaret Blanchard even holding a knife like that, never mind using it to carve the heart out of another human being.

Shaking her head, she stood up straight. "Don't touch a thing," she said to Henry, who scrambled to his feet and backed away from the knife and vent. He nodded a shaky assent to her instruction, which made her comfortable enough to leave the bedroom for a minute or two.

Emma tore into the kitchen cabinets, looking for a Ziploc bag. "Bless you, Mary Margaret," she whispered upon seeing boxes of baggies in every size imaginable. She pulled out one of the big freezer bags and ran back to the bedroom.

Luckily she kept a pair of winter gloves tucked in the pockets of her jacket. She dug them out and pulled them on before grabbing the rag-wrapped knife and tucking it into the freezer bag. Not exactly the most professional evidence collection she'd ever done but it was the best she could do on short notice.

Then she plopped down on the floor, once again staring into the heating vent. How in the hell had the knife ended up in there? _When_ the hell had it ended up there? It had to have been put in the vent after she'd arrested Mary Margaret because the teacher clearly hadn't heard it rattling around. The only issue with that theory was, as far as Emma could tell, no one had broken into the apartment.

Seriously, what the hell? It wasn't like Emma was expecting everything to be cut-and-dry but things making some sort of sense would have been nice.

"Emma?"

Henry's uncertain voice startled her back to the present. "What?"

"Miss Blanchard's in a lot of trouble, isn't she?"

"Yeah, Henry, she is," Emma said gently.

She was actually in far more trouble than Emma initially realized. The print on the box was easily explainable as the box having been stolen. A hidden weapon in the teacher's bedroom was, to put it mildly, not as easily explainable.

Emma pushed herself to her feet with another heavy sigh. "Henry, I have to go ..." She held up the bag and gave it a little shake. " … deal with this. I need for you to do me a favor, though."

"Anything," he eagerly spoke up. The look on his face made it plain that he wanted to help in any way he could.

"Don't say a word about this to anyone."

For a split second, he looked disappointed that Emma wasn't entrusting him to do more, but he covered, nodding at Emma. "I promise."

Emma gave him a grateful smile before walking him out the door. She locked the door behind her and pushed on it, testing the lock. It had caught.

Damn. There went that idea, slim chance though it was.

They separated at the sidewalk, with Henry taking off in one direction and Emma heading in the other. She probably should have driven but she wanted to use the walking time to think. Not to mention that she was not looking forward to having to fill Mary Margaret in on this latest development.

Because now they had a problem. A very large, very knife-shaped problem.

She had told Mary Margaret not to worry, which had been true when she'd said it. Now, though … this damn knife was a huge complication, one that Emma didn't quite know how she was going to explain away.

Obviously, someone had planted the knife in Mary Margaret's room, but how in the hell had the person gotten in? A shudder ran down Emma's spine at the thought of someone sneaking around in Mary Margaret's room … and possibly her own. The very thought of it made her feel … violated.

Oh, whoa. When the hell had she started thinking of the room as _hers_ and not just Mary Margaret's spare room that she happened to be staying in at the moment?

She shook her head in an attempt to get her train of thought back to the matter at hand. Who would do something like this to Mary Margaret, of all people? The woman didn't have a lot of enemies. Or any, for that matter. And why would she? It wasn't like she went around making people's lives a living hell.

_No_, Emma thought, _that's Regina's job._

Wait a second. Regina.

Could she really be behind this like Henry suggested? Not for the reason that Henry suggested, obviously, but still. Could she have done something to Kathryn and then framed Mary Margaret for it?

How would she have gotten into their apartment, though? And why target the teacher? What had Mary Margaret ever done to Regina that would make Regina set her up for murder?

That thread certainly required a little more tugging and pulling but it would have to wait. Emma had arrived at the station. Setting her shoulders to prepare herself for the upcoming talk with Mary Margaret, Emma stepped through the door.

The conversation had gone about as well as Emma had expected. When she suggested that Mary Margaret think about retaining a lawyer, she had not expected Mr. Gold to offer his services. Emma didn't trust Gold as far as she could throw him, so she'd tried to caution her friend. The only thing was Mary Margaret was a big girl and could make her own decisions.

Emma just hoped she hadn't made a wrong one.

She arrived back at the apartment after Mary Margaret politely kicked her out of the station with her head swimming. How was she going to get Mary Margaret out of this now? The evidence was not in their favor and short of finding some kind proof of a frame job …

And there was Henry, sitting on the stairs and offering her proof. He held out the ring of keys that Emma had seen in Regina's desk drawer.

She was confused at first but when he said he got the idea from his book, Emma's heart dropped into her stomach. She'd wanted proof of a setup; he thought he'd found proof of Operation Cobra.

Just as she suspected, the keys didn't work. She winced at the slump of his shoulders, the confusion on his face, the way he looked at the keys as if he didn't understand why they weren't the answer. In an effort to spare him from further disappointment, Emma put a stop to the experiment.

He managed to wheedle her into trying one more time. After a moment of thought, he chose a key and handed the ring over to her. Someone could have knocked her over with a feather when the key fit perfectly into the keyhole. Almost hesitantly, she turned the key and heard the deadbolt sliding out of place.

Holy friggin' _shit_!

"Do you believe now?" Henry asked her.

And though Emma may not have been ready to declare Operation Cobra one hundred percent real, she now had a plausible way for Regina to have gotten into the apartment without leaving any evidence of a break-in behind. She pulled the key from the lock and handed the ring back to Henry. "I need you to go put these back," she said, a little surprised at how shaky her voice sounded.

"But Emma!" he cried. "It's proof! We can take them to my mom and then–"

"They're possible evidence, Henry," she told him, "and they need to be put back where you found them. Quickly, before she realizes they're gone."

"Evidence?"

"It could help Mary Margaret."

Eyes widening in comprehension, Henry nodded and, after tucking they keys back into his jacket, hurried down the stairs.

As Henry's footsteps faded from the stairwell, Emma looked at the open door in thought. The legality and sheer creepiness of Regina having a set of keys that let her into various buildings in town would have to be dealt with eventually but not until she could find probable cause to search Regina's office. But that was how Regina did it. Now the only question was … how the hell was Emma going to prove it?


	17. Family By Choice

**Author's Note, Part the First:** We spent most of "Hat Trick" with Emma, but the episode was too rife with _stuff_ for me to bypass it entirely. (I've experimented before with the adding inner monologue to televised scenes thing, and for whatever reason, I just can't make it work.) I managed to find myself a little unseen moment and once I did, this chapter just came out on its own. I honestly have no idea where it came from; Emma and Mary Margaret wrote this one, not me.  
**Author's Note, Part the Second**: I just wanted to thank y'all for making this 1) my most-reviewed story ever, and 2) the first one of mine to reach a triple-digit review count. You guys are so awesome and your kind words mean more to me than you can ever know. :)

* * *

Emma sped as fast as she dared through the streets of Storybrooke. She kept one eye on the road and the other on her speedometer in an effort to keep her violation of the speed limit from becoming too egregious. A race against the clock, however, required some traffic law infractions. And really, who was going to catch her? It wasn't like she was going to write herself a ticket.

She needed to get Mary Margaret back in her cell and then get the hell out of the station before Regina showed up for her snark and gloating session. As of this very moment, Emma certainly looked like she'd spent the night trapped in some crazy guy's house. She needed to change her clothes and perhaps run a brush through her hair so Regina would have no reason to suspect that she and Mary Margaret had gone on a midnight adventure.

"Emma?"

She took her eyes off the road for a split second to glance over at Mary Margaret, who had been sitting quietly in the passenger seat since they left Jefferson's house. Whether consciously or not, the teacher had wrapped her hand around the arm rest. Emma tapped the brakes and slowed down a little bit. "Yeah?"

"I'm sorry. For running." She inhaled and held the breath for a quick moment. "For everything."

Emma chanced another glance at her roommate and noted with some relief that she had loosened her death grip on the arm rest. "I get it," she replied, returning her attention to the winding road in front of her. "You were scared."

"And when I left, you were hurt."

Emma immediately tensed. Here in this car was neither the time nor the place for this conversation. Then again, as far as Emma was concerned, it would never be time for this conversation. "I was worried for you," she said, hoping the slight shift in direction would distract the teacher. "Running just makes you look guilty, Mary Margaret, and you're not guilty. Not to mention … where did you think you were going to go? What were you planning on doing, hiding out in the woods forever?"

"I hadn't really thought it through that far," she admitted through a sheepish cringe. "But I wasn't apologizing for me. I'm apologizing to you. I hurt you when I left, didn't I?"

Emma groaned inwardly as she rolled her eyes. Why the hell couldn't she just let this drop? "We really don't have time for this, Mary Margaret. If Regina catches us, all the running in the world won't save us."

The second they left her mouth, Emma regretted both the words and the edge in her voice. Mary Margaret flinched then turned her head to stare out the windshield. Swallowing hard, Emma returned her attention to the road and let the silence fill the car.

Mary Margaret's escape had hurt her. When she first walked into the station to find the empty cell, she'd been so panicked that the way her heart skipped a beat hadn't registered with her. She hadn't really noticed the lump forming in her throat or the ache of her heart at the realization that Mary Margaret had taken off into the night.

What she didn't realize then – but she did now, dammit – was that she'd been devastated at the thought of adding Mary Margaret Blanchard to the long line of people who had left her.

The car skidded around a sharp turn, causing Emma to jam on the brakes and Mary Margaret to once again clutch the arm rest. "Sorry," Emma muttered, stealing a peek at the teacher. "For the turn and for what I said before."

"It's all right," Mary Margaret assured her.

Silence once again settled over them as Emma refocused on the road. This time, though, the silence bothered Emma. Which was odd, because silence very rarely bothered her. She reached down to turn on the radio and caught Mary Margaret watching her out of the corner of her eye. With a sigh, Emma sat back in the seat. "You did hurt me. I understand why you ran, I really do, but I couldn't bear the thought of you being one more person who ran out on me."

Well, that certainly sounded selfish as all get-out. Emma winced and started babbling in an effort to explain. "I know this isn't about me, nor should it be. It's just–"

"I understand what you meant," Mary Margaret interrupted, her voice gentle. "I'm so sorry, Emma. I wasn't taking off on you. I was just … trying to get away."

Emma nodded, swallowing hard. Of course Mary Margaret had simply been afraid. Truthfully, Emma didn't blame her. She really had no freaking clue why she'd taken the teacher's actions so personally.

Well, that wasn't quite true. Outside of Jefferson's house, she'd called Mary Margaret family. When the hell had that happened? She hadn't even realized she felt that way until the word slipped from her mouth.

Earlier, when she'd told Jefferson that she wished Mary Margaret was her mother, she'd simply been playing along with the crazy kidnapper guy. Arguing was clearly not getting her anywhere so she'd tried a different tactic. But maybe there was some element of truth in what she'd told Jefferson. Maybe she did want to believe that Mary Margaret was her mother.

It was impossible, of course, but still. There was something … familiar about Mary Margaret. Familiar and comforting. Emma had always thought of the woman's ability to know just what to say and her gentle persistence at getting behind her new roommate's wall as side effects of teaching small children for a living. Maybe there was more to it, though.

Mary Margaret had certainly gotten further behind Emma's wall than anyone in recent memory. And to her complete shock, Emma was glad she'd persisted. It was such a relief not to have to be alone anymore. It was terrifying, as if she was just waiting for the other shoe to drop, but in the rare moments Emma allowed herself to relax, it was also _really_ nice.

Maybe that was why Mary Margaret taking off had thrown her so much. In her mind, the other shoe had finally dropped.

"Emma?" Mary Margaret's soft voice startled Emma out of her mental wandering. "Did you mean what you said back there? About me being family?"

With a heavy breath, Emma glanced down at the dashboard clock. They _really_ did not have time for this conversation. Well, okay, maybe they had time for it. They were still a good ten minutes from the station and Emma couldn't drive any faster for fear of crashing the damn car. Regardless, Emma did not want to have this discussion, so they weren't going to have it, and that was that.

"I'm sorry," Mary Margaret said when Emma didn't answer. "That was pushy."

"No, it wasn't," Emma rushed to assured her. She stole a glance at her roommate and sighed. They were going to have this discussion, after all, weren't they? _Damn._ "Look, no matter how I word this, it's just going to end up sounding like something you'd find written on a piece of teenybopper costume jewelry, so I might as well just say it. Discounting Henry, I don't have a family. I never had a mother or a father or sisters or brothers. There was a boy when I was little who I thought of as a brother but he wasn't really my brother, you know?"

Sweet mother of God, she was rambling. _Reel it in, Swan_. "I'm just saying, I don't have a ready-made family so I get to choose my family. I chose Matthew when I was six ..." She paused, taking another deep breath. "And I chose you."

Another peek over at Mary Margaret confirmed that tears had welled in the teacher's eyes, and there was no mistaking the touched smile on her face. "You're not going to start crying on me, are you?" Emma asked. Oh, who the hell was she kidding? She practically begged. "I so can't handle crying right now."

At least that got Mary Margaret to chuckle. "I won't start crying on you." There was a beat of silence before she continued softly, "If it makes you feel any better, Emma, I chose you, too."

And that did it. Emma felt tears pricking at her own eyes. She wanted to believe it was simply because she was exhausted after spending all night fighting for her and Mary Margaret's lives and not because what the teacher had said was touching in any way, shape or form. Wanted, but couldn't.

"Emma Swan, don't you start on me now," Mary Margaret teased, a knowing smirk curling on her lips.

At that, Emma finally laughed, grateful for the release of the tension. "I won't, I promise."

They made the rest of the trip to the station in silence. Emma's heart began to race the closer they got, but when the empty parking lot came into view, she let out a heavy breath of relief. They had beat Regina. She whipped her car into her parking space and cut the engine. "We made it," she breathed.

Though Mary Margaret clearly wasn't happy at the prospect of returning to her cell, she too was relieved that they'd beaten the clock. "All right, let's get this over with."

After ducking inside the station, Emma hesitantly locked Mary Margaret back up in the cell. "I've got to get out of here," she told the teacher in a rush. "I want to change my clothes so Regina doesn't suspect I've been out all night. I'll see you at the courthouse for the arraignment, though. You'll be brought back here afterward, and I'll have some breakfast for you by then."

Mary Margaret nodded, taking in all the information Emma had just thrown at her.

She looked so overwhelmed that Emma couldn't resist saying, "It's going to be okay, Mary Margaret."

"I know it will," Mary Margaret replied with a quick nod. "You should go. Regina will be here any minute."

Emma nodded and turned to leave. She was halfway across the bullpen when a plaintive, "Emma?" stopped her. When she turned back to face her prisoner, Mary Margaret gave her a little smile. "I just wanted to say thank you. For caring enough to come looking for me."

A tiny smile curled on Emma's lips as she replied, "Of course. You're family."


	18. All You Needed Was a Miracle

It was late.

Well, it wasn't late, like wee hours of the morning late, but it was late enough that all of Storybrooke was at home and getting ready for bed. All of Storybrooke except Emma Swan. She was heading back to the station for what felt like the thousandth time over the past few days.

To her surprise, she had found that she didn't like being in the apartment without Mary Margaret. She was uncomfortable and on edge there without her roommate, for reasons she couldn't quite put into words. She hadn't realized just how much the sounds of Mary Margaret puttering around in the kitchen or humming along to the radio as she graded papers comforted her and made the place feel … homey.

At first, Emma thought the silence was the issue. She'd tried turning on the radio as she heated some soup on the stove – Progresso, because Emma had no clue how to make soup from scratch like Mary Margaret did – but even listening to oldies without Mary Margaret felt wrong. She managed to make it through a playing of "Oh What a Night" and one of "Don't Fear the Reaper." It was Neil Diamond's "Shilo" that finally made her snap the radio off, anger and sadness and loneliness combining to form one indescribable emotion that sent tears to her eyes and led her to pitch a glass across the room.

It took her a little while to figure out that it wasn't the silence but the emptiness. She had pretty much stopped going to the apartment altogether if she could avoid it.

Tonight, though, it wasn't sadness or loneliness that sent her back to the station. It was excitement. She had finally caught a break. She had evidence now. She had proof. She was getting Mary Margaret the hell out of jail.

Not that she could get Mary Margaret out of jail tonight; the wheels of justice apparently did not turn at this hour. But she could still get her paperwork in order and filed now to save time when Storybrooke woke up in the morning. With any luck, Mary Margaret would be a free woman by lunchtime.

She crept into the station quietly in case Mary Margaret had gone to bed. From what Emma could see in the semi-darkness, it looked like the teacher was sleeping peacefully, albeit uncomfortably curled up on the hard cot. Emma tiptoed to her office, slid the vase of flowers Sidney had given her out of the way, and fired up the computer.

At first she thought the light from her monitor would be enough to work in but after squinting at the keyboard one too many times, she gave up and flicked on the desk lamp. A quick glance across the station proved that the light wasn't disturbing Mary Margaret.

Emma's fingers flew across the keys as she filled out her report. In general, she hated paperwork. She and Graham used to play Rock Paper Scissors to decide which of them had to catch up on the paperwork and every time she lost, she would up the challenge to best two out of three. This time, though, she was actually looking forward to paperwork. This paperwork meant freedom and justice and victory. Regina was going down and Mary Margaret was going to be freed.

Filling out this paperwork felt _fantastic_.

"Why are you not at home?"

Emma gasped at the sound of the groggy voice. She tore her eyes from the monitor and followed the voice. Mary Margaret had awoken and she was now sitting up, rubbing her eyes, and squinting in the dim light provided by Emma's desk lamp. "I didn't wake you up, did I?" Emma asked as she tapped the keys to save her progress.

"No," Mary Margaret assured her. "You didn't answer my question, though. It's … late. Too late for you to be here. When was the last time you slept?"

The fact that she couldn't recall right away proved that it had been a while. Certainly longer than she felt comfortable telling Mary Margaret, who most likely would order her to go right home and go to sleep. "I'm fine."

She could tell from the expression on the teacher's face that she knew Emma was purposely avoiding her question. All the more reason to tell Mary Margaret now about the evidence she and August had found.

She grabbed the bag containing the metal shard off her desk and walked out to the bullpen, perching on the arm of the sofa in front of Mary Margaret's cell. "I've got some good news for you." She handed the bag through the bars.

Mary Margaret took the bag and examined it for a long moment before handing it back to Emma, her brow furrowed. "What is it?"

"A piece of a shovel. August and I found it where the box was buried. It matches a shovel in Regina's garage. This is the proof we needed, Mary Margaret. We got her."

A wide smile lit Mary Margaret's face. "You mean I'm getting out of here?"

"We're not home-free yet," Emma cautioned. "I still have to get the warrant and make the discovery of Regina's shovel legal. But since Regina can't read minds, I don't see how she could possibly know that I'll be coming."

Mary Margaret's smile refused to budge. "Thank you, Emma."

"When I'm opening these bars and telling you you're free to go, then you can thank me. Until then … let's just say things are looking up, all right?"

"All right."

Giving Mary Margaret a quick nod, Emma stood to return the shovel piece to the evidence locker. Before she had a chance to settle on the arm of the sofa again, Mary Margaret told her to go back and get her paperwork in order. "And then after that, I have to ask you to do me a favor."

"Anything," Emma said.

"Go home and get some sleep."

Anything but that. "Mary Margaret–"

"You're exhausted, Emma."

Her voice was so gentle that for the briefest of seconds, Emma wished she could lie down and let Mary Margaret talk her to sleep. She was too old for bedtime stories and had never really had anyone tell her any when she was young enough for them but damn if she didn't really freaking want one tonight.

She had too much to do to sleep now, though, and going back to the apartment was out of the question. "I'm fine."

Mary Margaret frowned, her eyes narrowing in thought as she regarded Emma. A moment later, sudden understanding settled on her features. "It's not the sleep you're avoiding. It's the apartment. You don't want to go home."

Emma averted her gaze, which told Mary Margaret more than any denial would have. She might as well have just held up a flashing neon sign and thrown streamers, for Christ's sake. The end result would have been the same. "It's really quiet without you." Then, to take the focus off her emotional admission, she added, "And I've pretty much forgotten how to make myself breakfast."

"Tell you what," Mary Margaret said with a gentle smile. "When I get out of here, how about I whip up some pancakes to make up for all the breakfasts I haven't been able to make you?"

"Chocolate chip?" Emma asked teasingly.

"As if I would consider making you any other kind."

"Deal."

The two women shared a smile, letting the light moment linger. Light moments had come so few and far between lately that neither one of them wanted to let it go.

It was Mary Margaret who broke it, her smile fading into a frown of concern as she took in the dark circles under her roommate's eyes. "Honestly, Emma, you need to get some rest. You've been running on caffeine and adrenaline for days now. While I'm certainly grateful that you've been working so hard to help me, you need to take care of yourself, too."

"I promise I'm okay." Emma could tell just from the look in Mary Margaret's eye that she was not at all convinced. "Look," she sighed, "when I inevitably crash, I'm going to crash hard, and I would really like to be, you know, awake enough to get you out of here. Tomorrow night when we're both home … that's when I can sleep."

It was Mary Margaret's turn to sigh. "I'm not going to pretend I'm okay with this but I also know that there's no way of changing your mind. Come tomorrow night, though, you're going to sleep, even if I have to stand over you until you do."

"Yes, Mother," Emma teased with a roll of her eyes.

"Well, according to Henry, I am your mother, so I figured I was allowed to play the part a bit." When Emma grinned, Mary Margaret looked at her with false sternness. "Now go finish that report of yours."

"Yes, Mother," Emma repeated, a little more tenderness in her tone this time. She stood and headed back to the office. She had just settled behind the computer when Mary Margaret called her name again. "You know, it's really hard to finish my report when someone keeps interrupting me," she called back teasingly.

Mary Margaret gave her an apologetic smile. "The shovel shard ..." the teacher said almost hesitantly. "You really think it's enough to get me out?"

"I don't see why it wouldn't be," Emma told her. "Conflicting evidence isn't a good thing for Spencer but it's a great thing for you. The shovel ties Regina to the scene. The skeleton key left in your cell is Regina's. It's enough of a connection that Gold should be able to enter in our theory that she used the keys to plant the knife in your room."

This time, the smile on Mary Margaret's face was hopeful. "I can't wait to sleep in my own bed. And I can't wait to make you some chocolate chip pancakes."

"I'm already looking forward to them," Emma said softly.

She waited until Mary Margaret settled back down on the cot before returning her attention to her paperwork. She had told David that morning that Mary Margaret needed a miracle. Emma wasn't ready to believe in angels just yet, but it certainly appeared that Mary Margaret had gotten her miracle.

* * *

**Author's Note:** There is a rhyme and reason to the songs I'm choosing to have play on the radio. If you don't know them, it doesn't really matter. If you do know them, they're simply adding a tiny layer to the chapter. The exception to this is "Shilo." I'm listing the lyrics here because I think it's important to know why I felt the song would hit so close to home for Emma. There are approximately a zillion and one versions of this song floating around YouTube, but if you do go looking for it, I recommend searching for the Frog King Records version, as it's my favorite (and the one I used here). :)

Young child with dreams  
Dream every dream on your own  
When children play  
Seems like you end up alone

Papa says he'd love to be with you  
If he had the time  
So you turn to the only friend you can find  
There in your mind

Shilo, when I was young  
I used to call your name  
When no one else would come  
Shilo, you always came  
And we'd play

Counting the years  
Keeping my dreams to myself  
Til a young girl with fire  
Made me trust somebody else

Held my hand out, I let her take me  
Blind as a child  
All I saw was the way that she made me smile  
She made me smile

Shilo, when I was young  
I used to call your name  
When no one else would come  
Shilo, you always came  
But you'd stay

Had a dream that filled me with wonder  
She had other plans  
Got to go, says she knows that I'll understand  
I understand

Shilo, when I was young  
I used to call your name  
When no one else would come  
Shilo, you always came  
Come today


	19. Failure and Forgiveness

**Author's Note:** I'm sort of ignoring the deleted scene for the purposes of this story, for no real reason other than ... I just can't deal with it. I tried, and I can't. It's a fantastic, heartbreaking scene, and that's the problem. Also, on a personal note, as of this chapter, this is now the longest fanfic I've ever written. Oops?

* * *

Emma had certainly known failure before but usually the only person she screwed over with her failure was herself. This time, Mary Margaret was paying for Emma's failure, and the nausea churning in her stomach reminded her that she didn't have the slightest clue how to make it right.

Emma didn't trust easily. Situations like this were why. She'd let the wrong people in. She'd made a goddamned mess.

Sidney was quite clearly working with Regina. Probably had been since he first offered to help Emma go after Regina seemingly forever ago. With the help of the bug he'd planted in the vase of flowers, Emma herself had given Regina all the information she could ever want. _Emma_ was the reason Regina had known she was coming for the shovel, not August. She'd accused the one real ally she had of betraying her, and, let's not forget, Mary Margaret was on her way to stand trial for a murder she didn't commit.

How in the hell had her internal lie detector failed her so miserably? It pinged off the charts with Gold, but Emma had gone to him out of desperation and not actual belief. Still, she hadn't seen that Sidney was lying to her and she hadn't seen that August had told her the truth.

Could she simply have wanted to believe that Sidney could help so strongly that she ignored the warning signs? Then again, she desperately wanted to believe that August had been sincere, so why was she so quick to believe that he was lying?

Maybe she was just tired.

Not that any of it mattered now. She couldn't rewind time and not put her trust in Sidney or Gold. She couldn't help Mary Margaret right this very second. The one thing she could do was try to make things right with August. Maybe she could salvage _something_ out of this mess.

August accepted her apology with far more grace than she would have if the shoe was on the other foot. For crying out loud, he even told her that he knew she'd see the light eventually! Why on earth did he have so much faith in her? She was just about to ask that exact question when a scream startled the both of them.

Emma didn't know what she expected to find when she followed the sound but a disheveled and disoriented – and very much alive – Kathryn Nolan was not it. After ascertaining that Kathryn was okay in the immediate sense, she pulled out her cell, pressed the hospital's number on her speed dial, and requested a bus.

She waited with Kathryn, gesturing for August to back off a bit. After getting no coherent response to her questions, Emma stopped asking them and started babbling at Kathryn instead, telling her help was coming and that she wasn't leaving until it did. At that, Kathryn grasped her hand and squeezed. Surprised, Emma squeezed back, hoping she was offering the woman some semblance of comfort.

The paramedics arrived a couple of minutes later and took over for Emma. They situated Kathryn on the stretcher, hooked her up to an IV line, and got the stretcher loaded into the back of the ambulance. Then they took off for the hospital, siren wailing and lights flashing.

Emma's next order of business required her to go back to the station. August followed her, for which she was surprisingly grateful. She burst through the door and strode to the radio with purpose. "Unit Ten, please respond," she said into the microphone. "Requesting immediate return of prisoner Mary Margaret Blanchard to the custody of the Storybrooke Sheriff's Department. Over."

It seemed like it took a day and a half for the car to reply. However, her cell phone confirmed the one-minute delay before she heard a staticky, "Rodger, Sheriff Swan. Returning the prisoner to your custody. We're about ten minutes out. Over."

"Copy that," Emma said, sharing a grin with August. "Out."

"Do you have the authority to do that?" he asked once she clicked off the hand microphone.

Emma shrugged. "I can't drop the charges on my own but I'll be damned if I let her sit in some county lockup until the charges are dropped. If I've overstepped, I'm sure I'll hear about it, but I've got to tell you … at this point, I don't care."

August grinned at her as she moved on to her third order of business, which was to pick up the phone and dial the DA's office. She somehow managed to keep her call to Spencer civil, telling him she would have her official report on the reappearance of Kathryn Nolan faxed over within fifteen minutes and she expected him to file the paperwork to release Mary Margaret Blanchard just as quickly.

Somehow August knew how much space to give her as she started on the paperwork she needed to send over to Spencer. He didn't leave the office but settled in a visitor's chair that he slid a little bit away from her desk. She wrinkled her brow at him but he just sent her an enigmatic smile. Usually that smile raised her hackles but this time she found it comforting.

Holy crap, she _was_ tired.

Just as she printed off her report, the county deputies returned with a very confused Mary Margaret. Emma had expected the confusion but the wary expression on the teacher's face came as a bit of a surprise. The deputies walked her into the cell she'd occupied earlier and removed the handcuffs from around her wrists. Emma closed the cell door, thanked the deputies, and waited until they left before turning to her best friend.

"Emma, what's going on?"

"Kathryn's alive." Emma tried to keep the emotion out of her voice but didn't do a very good job of it. She winced at how shaky she sounded before clearing her throat and taking a deep breath through her nose.

She watched Mary Margaret's face, expecting joy, but found only puzzlement. "We just found her. I'm working on getting the charges against you dropped. I'm not entirely sure I was supposed to call you back here but I-I couldn't let you sit in county until we got everything straightened out. You're my prisoner … my _responsibility_ and ..."

Christ, she was rambling again. And she was really dizzy all of a sudden. Her mind screamed that it was simply exhaustion but her little inner voice whispered that it was relief. Whatever the cause, it was making standing rather difficult, so she sank down on the arm of the sofa and dropped her head, gripping the bars of Mary Margaret's cell.

A moment later, she felt soft hands grab hers from the other side of the bars. She looked up at Mary Margaret, who was regarding her uncertainly. "You're sure this time? There's not going to be a trial?"

Emma shook her head no. "They can't try you for murdering a woman who isn't dead. I know I thought I had this beat before and I didn't. This time, though … there's nothing anyone can do about it. You're definitely going to be released. It's just a question of when."

It appeared to take a moment for the words to sink in but Emma soon saw first relief and then elation fly across her roommate's face. Her grip on Emma's hands tightened as tears leaped into her eyes. "Oh, Emma, thank you."

Emma flinched. What had she done for Mary Margaret to thank her? If Kathryn hadn't turned up, Mary Margaret would be on her way to county right this very second. This new turn of events was even more of a miracle than the shovel shard, and Emma was not in any way prepared to take credit for it. "I didn't do anything."

Mary Margaret squeezed Emma's hands tighter before letting her own hands drop to her side, a brief flicker of sadness in her eyes. Emma had seen that sadness before, when she and Mary Margaret talked after she returned Ava and Nicholas to their father.

Suddenly uncomfortable and no longer dizzy, Emma pushed herself to her feet. "Just bear with me a little longer. I have to get things rolling on your release and then I've got to get down to the hospital to check on Kathryn."

"Of course," Mary Margaret nodded, the thrilled smile returning to her lips.

Emma gave her a small smile in return before heading for the printer. Halfway to the machine, she stopped short. What the hell? She knew she'd printed her report but it was gone.

Before she could take one step further, August handed her a slim stack of paper. Her report, she realized as she took it from him, with a fax cover sheet she didn't remember preparing. "I faxed it over to Spencer for you," he said when she looked up at him questioningly. "Found the cover sheet template on your desktop and the fax number in the Rolodex."

"Thanks," she said, her eyebrows raised.

"Don't mention it," he replied, his voice soft. "I'll let you get back to work." He took his leave then, pausing briefly to tell Mary Margaret that he was happy to hear of her impending release.

Emma watched him go, entirely unable to make heads or tails of him. What was his deal? He swooped in, faxed a report for her, and then swooped out again … why? She met Mary Margaret's gaze and shrugged. The teacher simply smiled back at her.

Finally, Emma kicked herself into gear, grabbing her jacket off the back of her chair. "I'll be back soon," she said to Mary Margaret as she shrugged on her coat.

"Okay."

Emma was almost out the door when Mary Margaret called her name. She turned and found her roommate looking at her with a gentle expression on her face. "I know you think you didn't do anything special here, Emma, but you're focusing too much on the end result and not enough on what you did in the meantime."

"Mary Margaret, I almost got you sent to jail."

"No, _Regina_ almost got me sent to jail. You tried your hardest to keep me out of jail."

Emma stared at her in wonder. How in the hell was Mary Margaret being so … forgiving? Emma had failed to protect her and had given her false hope. Emma hadn't believed at the time that it was false hope, of course, but that was beside the damn point. The end result should still count for something. Shouldn't it?

"Go check on Kathryn," Mary Margaret said gently. "Hopefully by the time you get back, the paperwork will have gone through and you can release me. I believe I owe you some chocolate chip pancakes."

Emma blinked. After everything, Mary Margaret was still thinking of making her pancakes?

"What do you say? Do chocolate chip pancakes for dinner when we both get home sound good to you?"

Home. With Mary Margaret back, the apartment would be home again, wouldn't it? She had no idea what she'd done to deserve Mary Margaret's kindness but they could have that conversation later. All she wanted to do right now was bask in the glow of getting her friend the hell out of jail. "Sounds perfect," Emma said with a smile.


	20. Pancakes and Sneaky Bedtime Stories

**Author's Note:** You guys wanted the pancake scene, so I wrote y'all a pancake scene. You might want to have a toothbrush handy, though, because this is ridiculously sugary. That said, I apologize for nothing. :)

* * *

For someone who couldn't remember the last time she slept, Emma was certainly holding her own quite well.

After receiving the order from Spencer, she had opened Mary Margaret's cell and told her she was free to go with the sincere apologies of the sheriff's department. As Emma drove Mary Margaret back to the apartment to shower, change, and decompress, a little plan began to form in her mind. After ensuring that Mary Margaret didn't mind being left alone for another hour or two, Emma drove back into town.

She had decided to throw Mary Margaret a welcome home party, despite having little to no experience throwing parties. She enlisted help from Granny, who told her not to worry about the food since she could provide it all. She also told Emma where to go to get decorations and party supplies. Emma thanked her profusely and started inviting everyone she could think to invite while telling them to spread the word.

Party planning duties done for the time being, she contacted Henry via walkie-talkie to let him know that Miss Blanchard was finally home. Of course, the kid was thrilled to pieces. The second he heard about Mary Margaret's plan to make chocolate chip pancakes for dinner, he managed to talk his way into an invite. His mom wasn't home, he said, and she would never know.

After calling Mary Margaret to make sure she didn't mind feeding the kid, too, Emma picked Henry up and drove the both of them back to the apartment.

Mary Margaret had decided to take advantage of Henry crashing their dinner and turn the meal preparation into an impromptu cooking lesson. Emma and Henry walked in to find all manner of raw ingredients piled up on the counter.

Emma's eyes widened. Since her typical method of making pancakes involved a box from the freezer and a microwave, she was wholly unprepared for the sheer amount of _stuff _that went into them. As soon as they hung up their jackets and kicked off their shoes, the lesson began.

A flurry of activity soon took over Mary Margaret's kitchen. "We're making a mess," Emma said when she looked down to discover a circle of spilled flour surrounding her. Somehow, she didn't even want to hazard a guess as to how, Henry had gotten baking powder in his hair.

"That's what makes this fun," Mary Margaret teased as she fished a tiny piece of egg shell out of the mixing bowl. As if to prove her point, she flicked her other hand in Emma's direction, sending a cloud of flour into the air.

Emma cried out in surprise and jumped back, stepping right into the mess behind her. Henry snickered when she lifted her foot to examine the flour-caked bottom of her sock. Grinning, Mary Margaret flicked her fingers at him, too. There was just enough flour left on her hand to rain down on Henry's head, joining the baking powder.

Emma took one look at him and sighed. They were going to have to clean the kid up good before returning him home.

"It's too quiet," Mary Margaret said before heading over to flip on the radio. While her back was turned, Emma and Henry reached for the open bag of chocolate chips. Their hands collided, causing Emma to snort in amusement. "There aren't going to be any chocolate chips left for the pancakes if you two keep eating them."

Henry and Emma raised their eyebrows at each other. How had Mary Margaret known they had gone after the chocolate chips? "I thought my mom was the only one who knows when I do things behind her back like that," he whispered to Emma as he withdrew his hand.

Emma shrugged as The Grass Roots' "Sooner or Later" filled the kitchen. "Must be a teacher thing," she whispered back before slipping Henry a few of the chocolate chips she'd managed to snag. She put her finger to her lips and winked, causing Henry to grin.

"I saw that," Mary Margaret sighed, turning to face the two chocolate thieves with her hands on her hips. She slid the bag out of Emma's reach before resuming the lesson.

After a few minutes of instruction, Henry looked up at Emma and asked, "Hey, what's a bossa nova?"

Emma gave him a bewildered frown. How in the hell did the bossa nova fit in with sugar and buttermilk? "Huh?"

"She just said it in the song," he clarified as he took the whisk Mary Margaret handed him and began to stir the pancake batter. "'Listen to the rhythm of the gentle bossa nova.'"

Emma, who had been paying attention to Mary Margaret and not the radio, hadn't even realized the song had changed. "It's a style of music. I think there's a dance, too."

"Do you know how it goes?"

Emma was about to shake her head no – not that she would dance even if she did know how it went – when Mary Margaret took the whisk from Henry and gave it to her roommate instead. "I believe it goes like this," she said as she grabbed Henry's hands and began spinning with him around the kitchen.

A smile curled onto Emma's lips as Henry's surprised giggle grew into a thrilled laugh. "I don't think that's the bossa nova," she said when the two of them stopped spinning.

"It's not?" Mary Margaret asked, winking at Henry. "Oh well."

Shaking her head and giving an teasing roll of her eyes, Emma whisked the pancake batter. After a moment, she realized she was stirring in time to the music, which had changed once again. She had absolutely no idea she'd started quietly singing along with – of all things – "Do You Believe in Magic?" until she caught Henry nudging Mary Margaret and then pointing in Emma's direction out of the corner of her eye.

She abruptly stopped singing. Holy _crap_. It had to be the exhaustion. Emma didn't sing along to anything. Ever.

A minute later, Mary Margaret took the bowl from her while imparting a final bit of pancake wisdom: stirring too much would result in less fluffy pancakes. Then she told Emma and Henry to take seats at the table while she cooked.

Before long, Mary Margaret carried two plates of pancakes over to the table. She set the taller stack in front of Emma and the shorter one in front of Henry before turning back to the stove to make herself a plate.

They ate companionably, the topic of conversation shifting frequently. After a while, Emma stopped talking and just listened as Henry filled Mary Margaret in on everything the substitute the school had put in charge of her class had done with them. "She's nice," Henry said at one point, "but we miss you."

"I miss you all, too," Mary Margaret told him. "You have no idea how much."

The two of them continued to talk shop, and Emma soon lost track of the conversation. She hadn't felt it so much when she was standing up and moving around but sitting still for more than a few minutes had caused her second wind to peter out.

Actually, if she was being honest, she was more on her fourteenth wind than her second. She set her fork down and propped her chin up on her hand, her elbow on the table. A memory tickled then, one of her foster mothers telling her to keep her elbows off the table. She closed her eyes as she tried to recall which house that was. How old was she at the time? She couldn't remember but luckily it didn't matter all that much.

A gentle tap on the back of her free hand startled her. Gasping, she blinked and lifted her head to find Mary Margaret smiling at her. "You're falling asleep," the teacher said softly. "You were about to fall face-first into your maple syrup."

"I was awake," Emma protested. From the smirk Henry and Mary Margaret exchanged, though, she wondered if maybe she did doze off for a minute or two.

A glance up at the clock obliterated any concern or embarrassment she might have felt over possibly falling asleep at the dinner table. Regina had told Henry she would be home at seven, which was in thirty minutes. "Kid, you're going to be late! Go get washed up and I'll take you home."

"Emma, you're exhausted," Mary Margaret said as Henry got to his feet and took off for the bathroom. "You're not driving him home. Let me take him."

Something about the concern swimming in Mary Margaret's eyes told Emma not to argue. She nodded her assent and busied herself with clearing the table instead.

Henry emerged from the bathroom looking a lot less like a bakery had exploded around him, though he still had a stubborn bit of flour in his hair. He grabbed his coat and shrugged it on before slipping his feet back into his sneakers. "Bye, Emma! I'll see you tomorrow."

"See you tomorrow, kid," she returned. When Mary Margaret told her she'd be right back, Emma gave her a smile.

After the apartment door clicked shut, Emma went upstairs to change. Only after coming back downstairs did she fully take in the utter mess in the kitchen. Flour blanketed the floor, a trail of sugar led from overturned bag to the mixing bowl, and chocolate chips dotted the counter. Sighing heavily, Emma grabbed the broom and started the cleanup process.

Moving around again had given her a third – fifteenth? – wind. By the time Mary Margaret returned, Emma had wiped down the counter and stove, swept the floor, stowed all the dry ingredients back in the cabinets, and had the dishes soaking in the sink. "You didn't have to clean up," Mary Margaret said, her surprise evident as she hung her jacket on the hook.

"It was the least I could do," Emma shrugged.

Mary Margaret smiled. "I'm going to get changed but then do you maybe want to talk for a little bit? I just ... don't want to be alone right now."

To her surprise, Emma found that she didn't really want to be alone, either. "Sure. Just give me a shout when you're ready."

Mary Margaret disappeared into her room to get herself situated, and Emma decided to start on some of the dishes. The mixing bowl and the griddle should probably soak overnight, but she could at least get their plates and glasses washed and dried.

She had just set the last glass in the cabinet when Mary Margaret called her from the bedroom. She pushed the curtain aside to find her roommate seated cross-legged at the head of the bed. Smiling, Emma plopped down next to her. "I'm really glad you're home, Mary Margaret."

"I'm glad to be home," Mary Margaret said, "and I have you to thank for that."

Emma frowned at her. "I have no idea why you keep saying that. If Kathryn hadn't shown up out of the blue, you'd be in county lockup right now. It had nothing to do with me."

"End result," Mary Margaret reminded her. "You know what I saw when I was in that jail cell? You running around like a lunatic, trying this and searching for that, looking for some way to prove I was innocent. The fact that the decks were stacked against you is in no way your fault."

"It_ is_ my fault," Emma argued. "I'm the reason Regina knew I was coming for the shovel. Sidney bugged my office. If I hadn't trusted him …"

Mary Margaret was quiet for a moment. "That says a lot more about Sidney and Regina than it says about you, Emma."

Emma tore her gaze from Mary Margaret's, slumping back into the pillows propped up against the headboard. Maybe her roommate had a point. Maybe fighting like hell for her best friend did mean more than her ultimate failure. And everything had worked out okay in the end, so maybe the fight was all that should matter now.

"Maybe," she allowed, looking back up at Mary Margaret, "but it still doesn't mean I did anything special."

There was that sadness in her roommate's eyes again. "You believed in me. You never stopped believing in me, which is a lot more than I can say for most people. I couldn't have asked for anything more."

Emma searched Mary Margaret's face and found utter sincerity. She hadn't said that to be polite; she actually meant it. A little smile tugged at the corners of Emma's mouth as she sank further into the pillows. Her third – or fifteenth – wind was starting to dwindle.

Smiling herself, Mary Margaret started talking about how she couldn't wait to get back to school. She had art projects she wanted to start with the kids and she needed to get them going on their book reports for this month.

It wasn't until the topic abruptly shifted from the math test Mary Margaret had been preparing the students for to a creative writing assignment Henry had done really well on, as if anyone had any doubt he would, that Emma realized she had nodded off for a bit. She sat up with a start, causing Mary Margaret to jump. "What's the matter?"

"I've got to get up," Emma muttered groggily. "I'm falling asleep on you."

With a calm expression that indicated she had fully expected this turn of events, Mary Margaret tugged the pillows behind Emma down flat. "Lie down," she said, her voice soft.

Everything within Emma was yelling at her to get up because she could not crash on poor Mary Margaret, but her little internal voice told her it was okay. Since arguing required more energy than she had, she listened to her inner voice and gave up the fight, curling up on her side facing Mary Margaret. Her eyes slid shut and then fluttered open when Mary Margaret took her hand. "What–"

"Shh." Mary Margaret began running her thumb up and down the back of Emma's hand. "Did I ever tell you about the last art project we did?"

"I don't think so." The constant gentle motion on the back of her hand was soothing and Emma's eyes quickly drifted closed again.

"This is actually pretty funny. I had decided it would be fun to do some papier-mâché …"

That was the only part of the story Emma heard. She also never felt Mary Margaret brush a wayward lock of hair off her forehead before slipping her own hand free, settling down next to her, and turning out the light.


	21. A Decision Made

The first time Emma opened her eyes, it was to dusky gray light. A gasp caught in her throat when she spotted Mary Margaret fast asleep next to her. What in the …

She pushed herself up on one elbow, trying to remember why Mary Margaret was in her room. As she glanced around, she realized she had it backwards. Mary Margaret wasn't in her room, she was in Mary Margaret's. Okay, seriously, what the hell?

As if somehow sensing Emma's confusion, Mary Margaret turned over with a soft moan and reached out, taking Emma's hand in her own. Emma gasped, then squinted in the semi-light at Mary Margaret. As far as she could tell, the teacher hadn't awakened. She tried to tug her hand free but Mary Margaret simply tightened her grip.

Well, shit. It looked like her options were to risk waking Mary Margaret by pulling away or to wait it out. Letting out a mildly exasperated huff, she settled back down to wait. The tug of sleep was too strong, however, and in less than a minute, her eyes had closed again.

The next time she opened her eyes it was considerably brighter. A brief moment of panic gripped her when she didn't recognize her surroundings.

Wait a second, she was in Mary Margaret's room. But why? She wracked her brain and vaguely recalled waking up just before dawn and wondering the same thing.

_Aw, crap_, she thought when the reason came to her.

She had totally passed out on her roommate last night. Damn. Mary Margaret was no longer lying next to her but judging from the aromas wafting into the bedroom from the kitchen, she hadn't gone far.

Emma sank back down on the pillows, inhaling the scents of brewing coffee and frying bacon. A small part of her wished she could stay where she was and just hold onto this moment for a little longer. It felt like … home. Eventually, her responsible side forced her to climb out of bed.

She padded out of the room, following the delicious smells to the kitchen. "Good morning," Mary Margaret said when she saw Emma, a smile on her face. "Did you sleep well?"

"I did." Emma accepted the mug of coffee Mary Margaret offered her and took a sip. She had no idea how, but every morning Mary Margaret made Emma's coffee better than Emma did. "I'm sorry I fell asleep on you."

"It's quite all right. To be honest with you, I kind of engineered it that way." When Emma stiffened and arched a single questioning eyebrow, Mary Margaret smiled to set her at ease. "I thought of it when you were falling asleep at dinner. I figured you were likely to keep going until you crashed and thought it would be better if you crashed on a bed instead of, oh I don't know, sitting up at the table."

She didn't quite know how she felt about that. "Thanks. I think."

Mary Margaret gave her a little smirk before refocusing her attention on breakfast. Emma walked over to the opposite side of the island, content to just watch Mary Margaret cook. As she took another sip of coffee, her eyes traveled to the clock on the wall. What she saw almost made her spit the coffee back into her mug. "Holy shit! It's nine-thirty?"

"Yes," Mary Margaret replied, a frown knotting her brow.

How was she being so calm about this? It was nine-thirty on a weekday! Emma should have been on the clock thirty minutes ago, though she was usually at the station earlier than nine. Not to mention that the last time she remembered looking at the clock was when Mary Margaret called her into her room, which was at seven the previous night.

Had she really slept over fourteen hours? Shit! "Why didn't you wake me up?"

"Why would I?" Mary Margaret asked, her frown deepening. "You needed the sleep, Emma. It's not like you report to anyone, but even if you did, how many hours have you worked over the last few days? I think you're allowed to be a little late just this once."

"That's very sweet of you, but I have things to do." Emma set her mug down on the counter and headed towards the stairs to her room. "I have to get to the hospital to check on Kathryn, I have to get going on the investigation into your frame-up, I have to get things ready for your party–"

Mary Margaret grabbed her hand and pulled her to a stop. "You can do all of those things after you have some breakfast."

Emma opened her mouth to argue but the stern look on Mary Margaret's face stopped her argument before it could even begin. Looking at her now, it was not at all hard to believe that she really was Emma's mother. "Okay, fine, I guess I'm having breakfast. I'm just going to get changed and I'll be back down."

Mary Margaret smiled as she let her roommate's hand go. "That's better."

After the forced – but delicious – breakfast, things went pretty well for Emma. She checked in with Kathryn, who thankfully was doing much better but unfortunately hadn't seen or heard anything remotely helpful. She got everything finalized for Mary Margaret's party, which went off without a hitch.

Unless she counted that little moment when David Nolan showed up. She had taken care of that for Mary Margaret, though. What really weirded her out was how bad she felt at having to turn him away. This was the guy who'd broken Mary Margaret's heart and then accused her of murder. Why did she feel at all sorry she had to tell him to leave?

Weird.

Everything went swimmingly until Regina brought Sidney to the station to confess to kidnapping Kathryn to frame Mary Margaret. Emma knew it was utter horseshit but there was really nothing she could do about it. She had a _confession_. No one was going to believe that Sidney had confessed to a crime he didn't commit because, well, who did that?

She was still fuming when she arrived home that evening. She slammed the door so hard the picture frames rattled, which only served to make her even angrier. "Emma?" came Mary Margaret's voice from her bedroom. "You all right?"

"Yeah," Emma answered, though her voice betrayed just how not all right she was. "I didn't mean to slam the door like that."

Mary Margaret emerged from her room, the book she'd been reading still in her hand. "What's the matter?"

The thought of having to explain to Mary Margaret that Regina was getting away with everything yet again sent her temper through the roof. She really wanted to go break something but she'd broken enough of Mary Margaret's glasses while the teacher was stuck in that holding cell.

After eyeing her roommate up and down, Mary Margaret calmly strode to the cabinet and pulled down two mugs. It appeared she planned to use the tried and true method of cocoa therapy to calm Emma down enough to talk. Emma gave the ghost of a smile and stood at the counter to wait.

A few minutes later, Mary Margaret handed her a mug of cocoa. Emma took a sip and let the warm, cinnamon-laced chocolate linger on her tongue a moment. Mary Margaret watched her until she could see Emma's muscles relax, then smiled and made her way to the kitchen table. Emma followed suit, sitting down across from her. "Now do you think you can you tell me what happened?" Mary Margaret asked.

Emma set the mug down and took a deep breath. "Regina got Sidney to confess to framing you."

Mary Margaret's eyebrows shot to the ceiling. "She _what_?"

"Yeah, that's pretty much what I said. He's confessing to everything. I can't touch her."

"That's …" Mary Margaret sighed as she sat back in the chair. "That's so … _unfair_. To him, to you …"

"And to you," Emma reminded her. She took another deep breath to prepare before telling Mary Margaret what happened next. "I told her I knew it was bullshit. She didn't seem to care. In fact, she looked like she was … _enjoying_ it. I was so mad at her, Mary Margaret … I told her I was going to fight her for Henry."

Mary Margaret's eyes widened but she didn't say a word. She just waited until Emma chose to explain.

"At first I was just so _angry_. She tried to take my family from me, and I wanted her to know how that felt." Emma blinked when what she'd said to Regina finally registered. She hadn't fully processed the words she had chosen, most likely because she hadn't chosen them at all. They'd just slipped out of her mouth and now she remembered telling Regina that she tried to take away someone she loved.

Somewhere along the line, she'd come to love Mary Margaret. None of her other friendships had ever felt like this. The only other family she'd chosen was Matthew. She remembered loving Matthew, too, but she didn't remember it feeling the same. Maybe it was because they were kids and love was different. Or maybe it was because Mary Margaret was different. But why? Why was Mary Margaret different?

She shook her head, trying to get herself back to the here and now. "But on the way over here, I thought … maybe it's for the best if I take him. She's a sociopath, Mary Margaret. I don't want Henry … I mean, he can't …"

"You're worried about him," Mary Margaret said softly. "About his safety."

Emma looked up and met her roommate's eyes. "I know I gave him up and technically, I shouldn't have a say. But … this isn't what I wanted for him." She looked away again, staring down at her cocoa.

Mary Margaret was quiet for a long moment. "Emma, look at me." She waited until Emma looked her in the eye before continuing. "Don't take this wrong, but what you're proposing is going to be a very long and very trying road. Are you sure this is a decision you want to make right now?"

Immediately, Emma's defenses shot straight up. Damn straight she wanted to make this decision right now, and who the hell was Mary Margaret to tell her what to do? As she searched her roommate's face, however, she saw nothing but concern and softened a little. "You don't think I should try to get him back?"

"I'm not saying that at all," she clarified. "All I'm saying is this is a life-changing decision, for you and Regina … and for Henry. Once you start down this road, there's no going back. I just want you to be sure this is something _you_ want, not something you're trying to take from her."

Of course Emma wanted this! At least, she thought she did. She certainly didn't want Henry in that woman's house any longer than he had to be.

But then the reason for Mary Margaret's concern clicked: did she not want Henry in Regina's house because she was worried for Henry or because she was mad at Regina?

After a moment, though, she realized that her stomach was turning at the thought of Henry staying with a woman who framed his teacher for a murder that didn't even occur and convinced some poor innocent man to take the fall for her. This _wasn't_ about Regina. It was about Henry and what was best for him.

When she looked back up at Mary Margaret, she could tell that the teacher wouldn't accept that answer. Not yet. Anything she said now would merely sound like a justification of a decision reached in anger. "I'll sleep on it," she said instead.

Mary Margaret's relief was palpable. "Good."

Emma smiled back. She could let Mary Margaret believe she was thinking it over, but her mind was already made up. As soon as she had the opportunity, she was going to start compiling a shit-ton of evidence to use against Regina in the custody case.


	22. Change of Plans

**Author's Note:** This chapter was a lot of fun. Like, an almost unhealthy amount of fun. Please forgive me. :)

* * *

"Emma!" August's voice echoed from somewhere far behind her. She'd figured he would chase after her eventually but she was surprised it had taken him so long. She'd walked away from him a few minutes ago. "Emma, wait!"

She kept walking.

Henry believing in the fairy tale thing, she could understand. The notion that there was something _more_ out there than this life, that good defeated evil, that heroes existed, that every person eventually got his or her happily ever after … it all gave the kid hope in an otherwise hopeless situation. He filtered his emotions and circumstances through his fairy tale theory in an effort to understand them. It was his own bedtime story, in a way … the bedtime story he told himself. It was sad – so unbelievably sad – but it was understandable.

Jefferson had tried to tell her that the curse was real, too, but … well, Jefferson was crazy. The guy had kidnapped her in an effort to force her to make a magic hat! Clearly he was a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Could anyone blame her for not taking his word as gospel?

However, August W. Booth taking her out to the woods, showing her a tree with a hole in it, and expecting that to make her take the leap into full belief of curses and magic and fairy tale characters walking around in the real world? To believe that she was the one, the _only_ one who could break the curse and that everyone needed her? Screw. That.

It was utterly insane. Emma had no freaking clue how the hell she was supposed to save _everybody_. How could she be responsible for a town's happiness? Hell, she could barely manage to be responsible for her own happiness.

Emma was no hero. She wasn't a savior. She was nothing special, not at all. She was just Emma Swan, a girl who, from the day she was born, had never had a place in this world.

She was nobody.

"You can't walk all the way back to town, Emma." His voice was gentle now, though a little breathless, and no longer frantic. He was still somewhere behind her, but from the sound of it, he'd closed the gap between them. She continued walking, refusing to look over her shoulder to see how close he'd gotten.

August didn't say anything else but she could hear the leaves crunching under his feet. After a long moment, he called out, "What are you planning on doing, hitchhiking back to Storybrooke?"

Damn it, he was even closer now. She sped up a bit, feeling an overwhelming need to shake him. "You ever hear of calling a cab?" she shouted back, though she still refused to turn around.

"Cabs into Storybrooke aren't really things that happen."

Now he sounded kind of amused. She stopped walking, whirled around, and glared at him. "Why the hell not? And so help me if you tell me it's because the curse keeps them out."

"Have you ever seen one?"

Emma resented absolutely everything about him right now but what she resented most was how perfectly calm he seemed in the face of her skyrocketing anger. His question to her was genius in its utter simplicity.

She wanted to tell him that yes of course she'd seen one, thank you very much. As she thought about it, though, she couldn't recall ever seeing an outside cab in Storybrooke.

Not that that proved a goddamned thing. She hadn't exactly been on the lookout for cabs before. She'd never thought about whether cabs traveled in and out of Storybrooke until this very instant. No wonder she couldn't remember if she'd ever seen one or not.

Unable to answer August's question in the affirmative but unwilling to answer in the negative, she simply spun on her heel and resumed her trek to the diner. She would call a damn cab herself. Let the cab company tell her they couldn't take her to Storybrooke.

"Emma, please stop."

She heard his pace quicken to a run and within seconds, he'd caught up to her. He grabbed her hand to get her attention, which was the absolute last straw. She wrenched out of his grasp and whirled on him again, anger glittering like ice in her eyes. "Don't touch me!"

He raised his hands in surrender and backed away a few steps. "Why are you so angry right now? Really think about it. Why are you angry?"

He was the one who'd made her angry, for Christ's sake! How the hell could he not know? "I'm angry because I thought you were my _friend_! You told me you could help me with Regina, and all you did was take me out here and start spinning some bullshit story about how you're _Pinocchio_ and I have to save an entire goddamned town full of people! I can accept that kind of thinking from Henry because he's _ten_. What the hell is your excuse?"

"My excuse is that it's the truth," August said simply, "and that's why you're angry."

Emma shook her head. "No. I'm angry because I trusted you, and all you've done is lie to me."

"Look at my face, Emma. I am not lying to you."

She didn't see any tells when he spoke but that didn't mean a goddamned thing, either. He was clearly an accomplished liar, so he must have learned to control the subliminal tells. He had to be lying to her. He just had to be.

"You're not angry with me. You're angry because you're terrified. You're scared to death that it _is_ true. That's why you don't want to believe. It has nothing to do with how crazy it all sounds and everything to do with the fact that if you accept it, you accept the responsibility of being the savior. And, what, you don't think you're worthy, is that it?"

Emma gritted her teeth as her hands clenched into fists. Who in the hell did August think he was? How dare he presume to tell her how she was feeling? "You have absolutely no right–"

"You're right. I don't." His voice was quiet now. He took a careful step towards her, the way a ranch hand would approach a skittish horse. "But someone needs to get you to see the truth."

Emma needed to go. She needed to go right now. She'd had enough of this conversation and enough of August and enough of Storybrooke. She turned away from him and started walking back towards the road. At this point, she didn't even want to wait for a cab. She almost wished magic did exist, because then she could transport herself the hell out of Maine with just a snap of her fingers.

"Emma, wait." The pleading tone in his voice froze her in her tracks, even if she didn't turn around. He heaved a resigned sigh. "If you never want to talk to me again, I understand, but at least let me take you back home."

Home? Emma didn't have a home.

She chewed on her lower lip as she mulled over her options, which admittedly were very few. She could either go with August or she could call a cab at the diner and have the driver take her as far away from here as she could afford.

The second option sounded like a fantastic plan, and … hold on a second. What about Henry? She couldn't leave without saying goodbye to the kid.

Shit. She couldn't take off on Henry, but …

And suddenly, she thought of a third option. "All right, fine," she said, turning to face August. "You can take me back to Storybrooke. But I swear to God, if you mention even one more word about fairy tales or curses ..."

"I won't," he told her. On his face, she saw nothing but sincerity. Not that it mattered. She stomped off towards his motorcycle with a huff, and August trailed a few feet behind her.

The drive back to town was awkward and tense and Emma wished she were anywhere else. She said a silent prayer of relief when he pulled to a stop in front of Mary Margaret's building. She climbed off the bike and handed the helmet back to him without a single word. Then she practically flew into the building, eager to get away from … everything.

She stood in the stairwell for a long moment, trying to collect her swirling thoughts. No matter how much she tried to calm herself down, however, the only thought running through her head was, _Go, go, go, get out of here and never look back._

Emma silently let herself into the apartment, hoping against hope that Mary Margaret would be in bed already. She let out a breath of relief when she saw the curtain to Mary Margaret's room drawn. At least _that_ was one conversation she didn't have to have.

She darted upstairs and threw what little possessions she had into a duffel bag. At the top of the stairs, she turned back and looked at the little loft room with its cutesy country-cabin décor. This room was Emma's for a few months, and yet it still screamed Mary Margaret. It kind of shocked her how much she was going to miss it. A lump formed in her throat as she forced herself to turn away and descend the stairs.

She didn't want to leave Mary Margaret, but she knew the teacher would never agree to this plan and Emma _needed_ to go. She needed to get the hell away from fairy tales and evil queens and curses, and she needed to get Henry away from it, too. Once he was away from Storybrooke and away from Regina, she could wean him off the fairy tale thing, and then they could both learn to be happy.

Setting the duffel down on the floor, Emma tiptoed to the curtain and pushed it aside. Mary Margaret was sound asleep. What would go through her mind when she woke in the morning to find Emma gone? Would she be hurt like Emma was when Mary Margaret took off on her? Would she be angry?

Hell, she'd probably be glad to be rid of Emma. She could go back to not having to worry about replacing the glasses and small appliances broken in her roommate's fits of rage. She could go back to not having to walk on eggs shells around a prickly roommate lest she do or say something that made Emma uncomfortable.

Even as she thought it, Emma didn't think it was likely. Mary Margaret never seemed like she regretted allowing Emma to move in, at any rate. Still, the slim possibility that the teacher would be relieved made her feel better about her decision.

She stood in the doorway a moment longer. "I'm so sorry," she whispered to her sleeping roommate before dropping the curtain back into place.

Tears leaped into her eyes as she turned towards the front door. Damn it all to hell, she hadn't expected leaving Mary Margaret to be this hard. Her inner voice, usually a little whisper in the back of her mind, was screaming now, telling her to wake Mary Margaret and confess everything about her plan and let the teacher talk some damn sense into her. It was pleading with her not to go, not to leave, not to run away from the only family she had.

_This is for the best_, she told her inner voice, sniffing back her tears. _This is the right thing for me and for Henry_. She grabbed her duffel and tiptoed to the door. After one last look around at the dimly lit apartment – Mary Margaret had left a light on for her … how utterly Mary Margaret – she walked out the door and pulled it closed behind her.

She'd swallowed the rest of her tears by the time she got down to the car. She took a shaky breath as she climbed into the driver's seat and turned the key in the ignition. Next stop, Henry. Stop after that … who knew? Just as long as it was as far away from Storybrooke as possible.


	23. Fight or Flight

"Please, Emma! They need you! Your family needs you!"

It was almost as if Henry's words broke some kind of spell. Emma winced first at the metaphor and then again when she crashed back down to reality. Holy friggin' shit, she'd just come terrifyingly close to abducting her own son.

Since Emma found people for a living, she knew better than most how to hide. Running and hiding were two things she knew well. Adding Henry into the equation wouldn't have provided that much of a challenge. She would have had to wait until they'd settled someplace safe to enroll him in school, though.

But that was a minor detail. The big stuff – the taking off and the disappearing – was easy. It was almost second nature, which was a rather big and now highly illegal problem. She slumped back in the driver's seat, cradling her suddenly throbbing head in her hands.

"Are you okay?" Henry sounded panicked. "You didn't hit your head when I turned the wheel, did you?"

"No," Emma assured him. This headache most certainly did not arise from anything physical. She lifted her head and squinted at her son in the darkness. "What about you? Are you hurt?"

When he shook his head no, Emma let out a breath of relief. "Don't you _ever_ do anything like that again, Henry. We were damn lucky there was no one else on the road."

His eyes widened as the danger he had put himself and Emma in finally registered. "I'm sorry, Emma. But I couldn't let you leave! You have to break–"

"Not now, kid," she said, attempting to keep her tone somewhat gentle. She knew that he was scared – and that she had scared him by trying to take off with him – but she really couldn't handle any more curse-related discussion at the moment.

Henry uncharacteristically let the curse thing drop, for which Emma was immensely grateful. "Stay here," she said to Henry as she climbed out of the car to survey the damage. No dents or dings, thankfully, but the car had skidded into a ditch. She was going to have to get the damn thing out of the ditch herself, she realized with a groan. Henry's almost-abduction would be discovered if she called anyone for help.

She poked her head back into the car. "I have to push the car back up onto the road."

"Is there anything I can do to help?" Henry asked with a cringe.

The kid clearly felt guilty for sending the car into the ditch in the first place but she was not about to allow a ten-year-old to help her push a car. "Just sit tight," was all she said as she shifted into neutral.

It took a little while but she eventually managed to get the car back onto the shoulder. She plopped down into the driver's seat, out of breath and muscles aching. "I'm sorry, Emma," Henry said softly. He didn't offer any explanations or justifications this time. Just the apology.

"It's okay," Emma replied, turning her head to look him in the eye. "I'm sorry, too." She started the car and let a breath out through her nose. "Come on, I'll take you back home."

A flurry of conflicting emotions crossed Henry's face. He obviously didn't want to give up the dream of living with Emma permanently and dreaded having to go back to his own house. Underneath all that, though, was relief that he had stopped her from leaving Storybrooke.

He was silent on the drive back to Regina's. Emma could almost feel him getting tenser and tenser the closer they got to the house. Her heart ached for the kid. A few blocks away from the house, she pulled over to the shoulder and shifted into park. "Henry, I want you to listen to me."

His eyebrows knitted in a confused frown as he turned in the seat to face her. "What is it?"

"I'm not giving up. I will find a way to help you. It might take me a little bit of time but I promise I'll figure it out."

A relieved smile lit his face as he threw his arms around her. The hug was rather awkward due to their positions in the car, but Emma held on tight, silently apologizing for having to send him back to Regina after promising to take him away.

"All right," Emma sighed, pulling out of the embrace. "We have to get you back home before your mom finds out you're gone."

The house was luckily still in darkness when Emma pulled up out front. She let out a breath she hadn't even been aware she was holding. At least Regina hadn't yet discovered that Henry was missing. Now all he had to do was make back it into the house and they would be home-free.

"I can sneak back in without her hearing me," Henry whispered as if somehow reading her mind. "I've done it before."

A part of her wanted to sternly ask when the hell he'd done it before and how many times but they didn't exactly have time for that discussion. Next time she saw him, though, she'd get it out of him. "All right. I'll stay here until I'm sure you got in safely."

Henry nodded and gave her another quick hug before climbing out of the car. He dashed across the yard and disappeared around the side of the house, clearly figuring that entering through the back door would be easier.

Emma's heart pounded in her chest as she waited for a signal that he'd made it in without Regina catching him. It seemed like it took an eternity, but she soon saw a light in his bedroom window flash once, twice, three times before going out entirely. An indulgent smile tugged at her lips when it hit her that he'd blinked a flashlight at her. That kid, always with his missions and coded signals.

After pulling away from Regina's house, she drove the streets of Storybrooke aimlessly. She needed to go somewhere and think but she didn't know where to go. Eventually, she found herself at the rocky shoreline where Henry's castle playground once stood. She stopped the car, climbed out, and headed down to the water.

The wind was chillier than she expected, and she had to stuff her hands into her pockets to protect them from the icy breeze. She sat down on the sand and stared out at the dark water, lost in thought.

What she'd almost done tonight … it was terrible. Hell, it was a _felony_. Her fight with August had certainly fueled the desire to get the hell out and go as far as she could but the responsibility she felt for Henry had refused to allow her to leave him behind. It was fight or flight and Emma chose to flee … with her son in tow.

But why? What the hell happened to fight?

She didn't really know. Maybe she was simply tired of fighting. It felt like all she'd done since she decided to stay in Storybrooke was fight. Fight with Regina, fight with Gold, fight for Henry, fight for Mary Margaret's innocence, and now fight with August. Maybe after a while, even fight got used up and flight was the only thing left.

A deep shudder ran down her spine, snapping her out of her reverie. Her body was chilled to the bone from the cold wind coming off the water. Her teeth chattering, she pushed herself to her feet and headed back to the shelter of her car.

She only meant to sit in the car until she warmed up and then head back to the apartment. Maybe she simply got lost in thought again or maybe she slept; she didn't know. All she knew was that all of a sudden, it was morning. Not the early morning, either, but sun-in-the-sky, coffee-and-donuts morning.

Shit. Mary Margaret would most certainly be up by now. Much like Henry sneaking into his own house, Emma had been hoping to slip back into the apartment before Mary Margaret realized she was gone. But now … now she knew Emma had taken off. Now going back to the apartment meant having a confrontation that Emma had absolutely no desire to have.

Once again, her options were fight or flight. She didn't have the energy to jump on the defensive against Mary Margaret. She couldn't flee because she'd promised Henry she wouldn't. What the hell was left?

And there was her inner voice reminding her that there was, in fact, a third option: go back home without being on the defensive and face the music like a mature adult. Mary Margaret may understand or she may not but Emma would never know if she didn't go home. Mary Margaret was family, after all, and deep down, Emma didn't want to lose her any more than she wanted to lose Henry.

With a deep breath, Emma started the car and shifted into drive. Her inner voice was right, as it always was, and she'd grown tired of fighting with it, too. As she piloted the car back onto the road, she suddenly understood that it didn't always have to be fight or flight. There was a middle road, should she choose to accept it.

Maybe she should start accepting it more often.


	24. Sympathy

All of Emma's willpower went towards standing there and allowing Mary Margaret to yell at her. She had expected Mary Margaret to be angry. Hell, she'd even expected her to be hurt. After all, she remembered the ache in her heart when she discovered that Mary Margaret had taken off in the middle of the night quite well. The disappointment in her friend's eyes when Mary Margaret looked at her, though … Emma had not expected that at all.

Emma had never mattered enough to anyone to disappoint them, but she'd been disappointed plenty of times. Being disappointed was freaking _terrible_. There were no words for how awful she felt for inflicting that on her best friend.

After Mary Margaret told Emma she needed to figure out what was best for Henry on her own, she retreated to her room. Emma stood in place for a long beat, trying to figure out her next step. The young, scared part of Emma wanted to pick up her bags and walk out the door with a "Screw it," figuring the damage to the friendship was beyond repair. It was the older, more mature part of her that didn't want to give up. The older, more mature part of her wanted to try to make things right.

Huh, maybe she did have a little bit of fight left in her after all. Not the destructive kind of fight but the good kind, the kind that made her fight tooth and nail for what was hers.

Emma took a deep breath before crossing the room. She paused just outside Mary Margaret's room, shut her eyes for a brief moment, and knocked on the doorjamb. There was the slightest hint of a sigh from Mary Margaret before she said, "Yes?"

"Can I come in?" Emma asked softly.

At first, Emma didn't think she was going to answer. The few seconds it took for her to pull the curtain out of place and gesture for Emma to step inside felt like an eternity. Anger still radiated from her, enough that Emma had to remind herself not to run and then force herself to duck past the curtain into Mary Margaret's room.

The teacher dropped the curtain before turning to face her wayward roommate, her arms crossed over her chest. She looked like she still had so much she wanted to say but knew the next move needed to be Emma's.

"I'm sorry, Mary Margaret," Emma offered, even though she highly doubted a simple apology would be enough to make up for the anger and hurt feelings. "I shouldn't have left without saying goodbye. I shouldn't have left at all. I know I hurt you. I just …" She trailed off, unable to think of a proper justification for her actions.

"Help me understand this, Emma," Mary Margaret said, uncrossing her arms. She gestured towards the bed, a silent suggestion for the two of them to sit.

Emma perched uncomfortably on the edge of her roommate's bed, her gaze traveling around the room. How could she make Mary Margaret understand why she'd run? How could she tell her that August took her into the woods to try to convince her the curse was real and that she'd panicked? The curse _wasn't_ real. It was certainly not a reason to pack up everything and take her kid in the middle of the night.

Then it hit her: the curse wasn't why she'd run at all. It wasn't about the fight with August; it was about what the fight with August represented. It was about the fear of settling down and the responsibility of having people rely on her. It was about how she'd felt herself tailspinning and how she'd just needed it to stop.

She finally trained her gaze on Mary Margaret, her eyes searching her roommate's. "Why did you run?"

Mary Margaret narrowed her eyes slightly. "This isn't about me."

"It's the only way I can make you understand," Emma said, then winced at the helplessness in her own voice. "Why did you run?"

"I was scared."

"Why were you scared?"

"Because …" She trailed off, her brow wrinkling as she thought back to that night in her cell. A moment later, she looked back up at Emma, sudden understanding flooding her features. "Because nothing was certain anymore."

"Because your life was changing faster than you could comprehend and you just needed to get away from it even for one second," Emma said softly. "Nothing else in the world mattered. The only thing you cared about was getting somewhere safe. Somewhere away from all the uncertainty."

Mary Margaret nodded, her features softening even more. Emma could almost see the anger leaving her body, her muscles relaxing under the release of the tension.

"All my life, there's only been me," Emma continued. "That's all I know. That's _everything_ I know. And now all of a sudden there's Henry and there's you and, to a lesser extent, there's all of Storybrooke. Everything I know no longer applies. I just … needed to get away from the uncertainty."

"You were heading straight for uncertainty, though," Mary Margaret reminded her. "Where were you and Henry going to go? What were you going to do? How were you going to take care of him on the road?"

"Did the uncertainty of the future stop you from trying to run from the uncertainty of the present?" Emma asked gently.

Mary Margaret swallowed hard. "All right, point taken. But if your whole reason for running was to get away from becoming an 'us,' why take Henry?"

Emma tore her gaze from Mary Margaret's, inspecting her hands instead. "I couldn't leave him behind. I didn't … I didn't want to disappoint him." She looked back up at Mary Margaret. "I didn't want to leave you behind, either, but I knew you never would have come with me."

"To become an accomplice to kidnapping your son? Of course I wouldn't have gone with you." Emma flinched, causing Mary Margaret to sigh. "I wouldn't have gone with you, Emma, but you know what I would have done? I would have talked to you. I really wish you had told me all of this last night. Maybe we could have come up with a solution together."

"Part of me wanted to tell you," Emma quietly admitted. After all, her inner voice had told her to wake Mary Margaret and confess.

"Why didn't you?"

Emma couldn't offer an explanation, so she simply shrugged. Looking back on it in the cold light of day, she knew she should have talked to Mary Margaret but at the time … at the time, she'd just needed to go.

Mary Margaret sighed again. "I know you don't trust easily but doesn't handling everything on your own and constantly being on guard just get _tiring_?"

It _really_ did but she she'd been on guard for so long that she didn't know how else to be. "Letting my guard down has never ended well," Emma said, fidgeting uncomfortably. "And after a while, you stop letting it down. You stop trying because all trying gets you is hurt."

Tears brimmed in Mary Margaret's eyes. It took Emma a moment to realize that the tears were for her.

She wasn't used to sympathy. Now, pity … that was something familiar. She'd gotten so much pity that she actually kind of hated it. But sympathy … that was different.

Her inner voice reminded her that was because Mary Margaret was different. It was okay to trust her implicitly, the way Mary Margaret herself trusted. It was okay to let her in, and it was okay to let go of the fear long enough to let her in.

So when Mary Margaret reached out and grasped Emma's hand, Emma didn't pull away. "I know you've probably heard it before but I _promise_ you, Emma, I am not going anywhere. It doesn't have to be just you anymore. And I know the possibility of your 'me' becoming an 'us' is probably terrifying for you, but you know what? The fear is only temporary … if you allow yourself to face it instead of constantly running from it." She smiled gently. "Running has to get tiring, too, doesn't it?"

The lump that had formed in Emma's throat as Mary Margaret spoke was now affecting Emma's own ability to talk. Since words weren't going to happen any time soon, she squeezed Mary Margaret's hand instead. From the softening expression on her friend's face, Emma guessed that she completely understood.

Emma's gesture was so small but it had spoken volumes. She had agreed to try to allow her "me" to become an "us." She was trusting Mary Margaret implicitly. It was a huge step, one neither of them was taking lightly.

"Thank you, Mary Margaret," Emma finally managed to whisper.

Mary Margaret's brow knotted in slight confusion. "For what?"

"For forgiving me."

"There was nothing to forgive," Mary Margaret replied with a kind smile. "We're family, right?"

Emma squeezed Mary Margaret's hand harder, suddenly very glad she'd chosen the teacher as her family.


	25. Solomon's Choice

**Author's Note: **This is likely the last chapter I'll be able to post before Christmas, so I just wanted to say that you all are awesome and I hope you have a wonderful holiday. :)

* * *

Emma's heart pounded in her chest as she climbed the stairs to the apartment. She was not at all looking forward to the conversation she needed to have with Mary Margaret.

After talking with Archie, Emma had come to a decision regarding Henry. She had decided to tell Mary Margaret first because … well, she told herself Mary Margaret needed to be told first because the teacher would be affected by her choice more than most, so she deserved to know. A small part of her, though, wondered if she wanted to tell Mary Margaret first because she was looking for … not approval, really, but a blessing of some sort. Or something.

She arrived at the door of the apartment far too quickly for her liking. In light of the discussion the two of them had had this morning, Emma was kind of afraid that Mary Margaret would assume this new conclusion was fueled by the same kind of questionable decision-making skills that Emma had demonstrated last night.

It wasn't, not at all. The two outcomes were similar, yes, but the methods through which she'd arrived at them could not have been more different. Last night's decision to flee was born out of panic. Her new decision had come from careful deliberation. She just hoped she could get Mary Margaret to see the difference.

She squared her shoulders before wrapping her hand around the doorknob and pushing the door open. The second Emma stepped over the threshold, the aroma of simmering tomato sauce filled her nose. Good God, she was going to miss this, walking into an apartment that smelled like a restaurant. _No, not like a restaurant_, she clarified to herself when her eyes involuntarily closed as she inhaled the scent. _Like home_.

"Hi, Emma," Mary Margaret said warmly, snapping Emma back to reality.

"Hey." Emma locked the door behind her, wishing the teacher didn't sound so happy to see her. "I need to talk to you."

"Uh oh, that sounds serious," Mary Margaret teased, her attention still focused on the sauce. Only after looking up and spying the pained expression on Emma's face did she realize that her joke was ill-timed. Her smile quickly faded into a frown of concern. "What's the matter?"

Swallowing hard, Emma crossed the room and eased down into what had become her chair at the kitchen table. _It won't be my chair much longer_, she thought with a pang of sadness.

Mary Margaret tapped the wooden spoon on the edge of the pot to shake loose as much sauce as possible before setting it down on a paper towel on the counter. She covered the pot and walked over to the table, sitting down across from her roommate. "Emma, you're kind of scaring me."

Emma looked up at the teacher, a lump already beginning to form in her throat. _Here goes nothing_, she thought. "This morning, you told me I have to figure out what's best for Henry."

"Oh, Emma, I was angry this morning–"

"No, you were right." Emma cleared her throat in an effort to dislodge the growing lump. It didn't work. "If I want to give him what he needs, I can't base that decision on what I want. It has to be about him first."

Her hands had started to tremble. She clenched them into fists and released them a couple of times to calm the shaking. "I thought my being here would be good for him. I didn't count on Regina being … well, Regina. What she and I are doing is dangerous, Mary Margaret, and it needs to stop. Which is why I think it's best if … I think it's best if I go back to Boston for a little while."

Mary Margaret's jaw dropped in surprise but she swiftly covered, closing her mouth. She leaned forward in the chair, resting her forearms on the table, and looked Emma in the eye. "I thought you decided this morning not to run. I thought you decided to face your fear."

"I'm not running," Emma insisted, "and I'm not scared. I'm … I'm taking myself out of the lineup." She wrinkled her nose at her mixed metaphor but she couldn't think of a better way to describe it.

"I'm afraid I don't understand," Mary Margaret said softly after a moment of silence. "How is your going back to Boston going to help Henry?"

Emma swallowed hard. "Every time I fight with Regina, something happens and someone else gets hurt. Just think about everyone who's gotten caught in the crossfire of this little war between her and me." She ticked the names off on her fingers. "Sidney, David, Kathryn. You, and most especially Henry. It's not fair, and it's not healthy for any of us. The only thing I can think to do to make it stop is–"

"Surrender?"

"Not surrender. Retreat." Emma smiled to herself. This war metaphor was much clearer. "I'm not talking about moving back to Boston permanently. I'll call, I'll come back to visit, and someday when she and I have worked out some kind of compromise, maybe then I can come back here to stay."

Mary Margaret's eyes brimmed with tears when she realized that Emma was quite serious about moving away. "I don't want you to go," she whispered.

"I don't want to go, either," Emma admitted softly. "I don't want to leave you. I don't want to leave him with her. But she's not going to let him go even a little bit without a fight and I can't put him through that."

At that, Mary Margaret wiped the tears from her eyes and gave Emma a tiny, proud smile. "You can't bear to see the baby split in two."

"Excuse me?" Emma asked, her brow wrinkling.

"The biblical story," Mary Margaret clarified. Emma still must have looked slightly confused, because Mary Margaret leaned back in preparation for some storytelling. "Two women approached King Solomon, both claiming to be the mother of a child. Solomon decided that the only fair way to settle the dispute was to split the child with a sword so that each woman could have him. One of them protested, said the other woman could have him if that's what it took, just as long as the baby wouldn't be split in two. And that woman, Solomon decreed, was the true mother of the child."

Emma hadn't recognized the story until Mary Margaret mentioned King Solomon. Tears burned her eyes but she blinked quickly to clear her vision. She watched Mary Margaret's face carefully when she asked, "Do you really see me as his true mother?"

"Absolutely." As was typical when Mary Margaret spoke words of encouragement, Emma did not see any tells. "You're doing what you believe is best for Henry, even though it's not what you want. You're backing away from the fight because you see how much it's hurting him. To me, that's no different than the mother in the Solomon story. Even if it's not true in the eyes of the law, you _are_ his mother, Emma, his true mother."

"Thank you," Emma whispered. Mary Margaret smiled gently and reached across the table for her hand. Emma only hesitated a second before slipping her hand into her roommate's. Holy crap, she was going to miss Mary Margaret so freaking much.

"You're very welcome, Emma," Mary Margaret returned softly. "And just so you know, you will always have a place here. That room upstairs? Is yours, whenever you want it."

That did it. The tears that had been threatening to fall from Emma's eyes for the past few minutes finally spilled over. Thankfully, Mary Margaret didn't say a single word about them. She just let go of Emma's hand so she could properly dry her eyes.

It took Emma a moment to collect herself. "I'm going to miss you," she said once she'd finally gotten her voice back under control.

"I'm going to miss you, too," Mary Margaret admitted. "You better call me. Every single day. We'll have hour-long conversations about nothing at all, and I don't want to hear a word about how you hate the phone."

At that, Emma chuckled. During one of their very first late-night discussions over cocoa as new roommates, Emma had admitted that she could not stand talking on the phone. Even as a teenager, she'd hated the phone. Now, though, she was kind of looking forward to calling Mary Margaret. Maybe she'd just never had anyone with whom to have hour-long conversations about nothing at all before. "I'll call you," she promised. "Every single day."

"The first day you miss, young lady, I am driving down to Boston to find you," Mary Margaret continued with mock sternness. She tried and failed to hide a grin when Emma playfully raised her eyebrows at her. "Trust me, you do not want me coming down there. It won't be pretty."

"Yes, Mother," Emma teased, her voice soft.

"Like I said before," Mary Margaret said teasingly, "I figured I'm allowed to play the part a little."

As far as Emma was concerned, she was allowed to play the part more than a little. Even though there was no possible way she could be Emma's mother, Emma couldn't think of a single person she would rather have claim that title.


	26. Sacrifice

For a split second, Emma thought Henry was faking. Not that she thought he was faking to be mean or anything, just as a clumsy, kid-like attempt at proving a point. Then it registered how still he was. He didn't move, didn't flinch, didn't react at all to her increasingly panicked calls of his name.

And then she knew. In the pit of her stomach she _knew_ that he was not faking.

She dropped to her knees next to him and gave his shoulders a rough shake. Nothing. No reaction whatsoever. The small sliver of hope she'd been clinging to that he was faking after all vanished. He wouldn't have been able to maintain it this long, for one thing, and he would have stopped the second he realized she was getting upset, for another.

A flash of memory brought her back to that night in the sheriff's station with Graham. When he had collapsed and … well, everyone knew how _that_ had turned out.

_No_, she thought, shaking the memory from her mind and fighting the urge to vomit. No, no, no, this was _not_ supposed to happen. Henry was supposed to be fine. He was supposed to take a bite out of that turnover and continue talking to her because the turnover was _not_ poisoned. Everything was supposed to be fine.

Emma fumbled for her cell phone and punched the hospital's number on her speed dial. It wasn't until she brought the phone up to her ear that she realized how much she was shaking. _Calm down_, she instructed herself. Henry needed her to regain her composure and handle this calmly.

She focused on her breathing – in, hold it, out; in, hold it, out. All of her careful breathing went out the window the second the hospital dispatcher answered. Emma remembered to identify herself but as soon as she requested an ambulance to be sent to Mary Margaret's address, her hands started shaking again. When the dispatcher asked her the nature of the emergency, she hesitated for a brief moment.

What the hell had happened? Henry had gone on and on about the turnover being poisoned but … that was crazy. Wasn't it?

Her eyes shot to Henry again. Obviously _something_ had happened to him. Maybe Regina had poisoned the pastry. Not with a curse, obviously, but with … what, heavy metals, perhaps? Arsenic or lead? How would Regina have gotten her hands on those, though? She could have obtained mercury from an old thermometer, Emma supposed. Or maybe it wasn't heavy metals at all. Regina could have laced the turnover with some kind of household chemical.

"I think my son may have been poisoned," she told the dispatcher, hardly believing the words even as they left her mouth.

"Do you still have what he ingested?"

"Yes."

"Bring it with you," the dispatcher instructed.

Emma had had every intention of bringing it with her but she thanked the woman on the other end of the line before disconnecting the call. She made herself a little more comfortable on the floor, sitting down cross-legged. She gently tugged Henry closer until she was cradling him. A memory of holding Graham pretty much the same way tried to force its way out but Emma refused to let it surface. Good God, what she wouldn't give to have Mary Margaret here with her right about now.

The teacher had volunteered to find somewhere to go so that Emma could break the news to Henry about her move back to Boston in private. Now Emma wished she had asked her to stay. Before she had time to realize what she was doing, her phone was in her hand and she was dialing Mary Margaret's number.

"Can you meet me at the hospital?" she asked, her voice trembling, when her roommate picked up.

"What's the matter?" The teacher's voice telegraphed her concern, which made Emma cringe. Crap, she must have sounded more panicked than she thought she did.

"Henry … he collapsed. I think … Regina …" She wasn't making a lick of sense and she knew it. She was trying to remain calm, though, and voicing her suspicions out loud would make them real. And she could not bear the thought of her suspicions being real, not at the moment. "Please, Mary Margaret, can you meet me at the hospital?"

"Of course." Emma could hear the concerted effort Mary Margaret was making to keep her own voice controlled. Again, Emma cringed. She was not at all used to having people care enough to try to keep calm for her sake. She didn't think she liked it. In all honesty, it made her feel kind of guilty. "I'll be there as soon as I can."

"Thank you," Emma replied.

"Everything's going to be okay, Emma."

Emma wished she could believe that, but she thanked Mary Margaret again before ending the call. Now she had nothing to do but wait.

She looked down at Henry's pale little face. How could this be happening to him? It should have been her. If there was poison in that damn turnover, it was meant for her.

But why would Regina try to kill her now, after Emma had just told her she was leaving? The mayor had just been told, essentially, that she'd won. Even if Regina had made the turnover with the intention of poisoning her, why go through with giving it to her?

Then she remembered Henry telling her that she was a threat to the curse as long as she was alive. The curse wasn't real, of course, but Henry filtered his observations through his fairy tale theory. Could he have somehow known that … what, Regina was so threatened by Emma's very existence that she felt the need to get rid of her permanently?

It sounded insane. Like something out of one of those crazy true crime documentaries. But something was definitely wrong with that turnover, and Henry had known it. He …

Whoa, holy _shit_. Henry had eaten that thing knowing full well there was something wrong with it … all to keep Emma from eating it herself. He had sacrificed himself for her. Why on God's green earth would he do something like that?

"Oh, Henry," she whispered, running her thumb back and forth over the boy's forehead. She was instantly reminded of the way Mary Margaret had run her thumb over the back of Emma's hand the night she was released from jail. "What in the hell were you thinking?"

The paramedics burst through the door then, scaring the crap out of Emma. She had been so lost in thought and panic and confusion that she hadn't even heard the damn siren. One of the paramedics held his hand out to her, and she was again thrown back to the night Graham collapsed. The paramedics who responded to that call had had to gently get her out of their way, too.

She allowed him to help her to her feet and then leaned back against the kitchen island, watching them work on her son. It wasn't until they pulled out a butterfly needle to start his IV that she realized how _small_ he was.

This could not end the way it had ended with Graham. It just couldn't. Graham himself was tragically young, but Henry? The notion of Henry meeting the same fate was far too much for her to contemplate.

Unable to watch anymore, Emma tore her eyes away from the paramedics. Her stomach roiled as her gaze landed on the turnover instead. She ran over to the cabinets to grab a freezer bag from Mary Margaret's stash and bagged the pastry much the way she would bag any other piece of evidence. She intended to tell the hospital to test it for anything and everything they could think of that would cause a person to collapse on contact.

"Sheriff Swan?" one of the paramedics gently asked, his soft voice startling her back to reality. "Are you riding with us?"

Damn straight she was. "Yes, please."

He nodded at her, and she followed them out the door. She tried not to notice how easily they carried Henry's stretcher down the stairs, if only because it reminded her how small and vulnerable and _young_ he was.

The paramedics got Henry loaded into the back of the ambulance and allowed Emma to climb in as soon as they finished securing the stretcher in place. She perched on the little bench and gripped Henry's limp little hand tightly. "I'm not leaving you, kid," she whispered to him, running her free hand over his hair. "You better not leave me."


	27. Truth Revealed

It killed Emma that it took something like this for her to see the truth. It was only sheer desperation that made her consider the possibility of Henry's theory being true, because all of a sudden, reality no longer made any kind of sense. The kid had collapsed on contact. He was showing no normal symptoms of a real-world poisoning. But something had happened to him, and real-world medicine didn't seem to be able to offer her any answers.

So she looked for answers in fantasy and discovered that everything she thought she knew was backwards. Fantasy was reality, and reality was fantasy.

It was all true, everything Henry and August and even Jefferson had tried to tell her. The curse, the fairy tales … all of it was real. It was unbelievable and crazy and utterly _insane_, but it was true.

It was true, and Regina had confirmed it. Emma supposed Regina could simply have been playing with her, but she didn't give off any tells, for one thing. For another, why would she? Why choose now, this moment, with Henry lying in the hospital, to confirm the kid's theory if it wasn't true? What would she gain by taking Emma down this path? It wasn't about Emma or Regina at this point, it was about Henry. Their poor little boy who had eaten a poisoned apple that sent him into a death-like sleep.

An apple that was meant for Emma.

And then something new hit her. Regina was the Evil Queen, which meant the Evil Queen had just tried to kill her with a poisoned apple. It was the first time Emma had thought about it in those terms. Maybe, when she had time to process it a bit more, it would stop sounding so … crazy. Maybe, but Emma didn't really think so.

Her rational side, trying desperately to hang on to some semblance of reason and order, once again argued that Regina had been lying. _But Gold confirmed it, too_, she told herself. Not that Emma trusted Gold – Rumpelstiltskin, for Christ's sake – in the slightest, but like she had said to Regina, she didn't have a choice but to trust him. So trust him she did, and he had essentially sent her on a hero's quest.

So now here she stood, back in the hospital after acquiring Prince Charming's sword from Rumpelstiltskin, about to head off on a quest to find the one bit of magic left in this world, magic strong enough to break any curse. The magic she was counting on to save her son.

It sounded like … the premise of a video game. Or an epic fantasy movie, one of those suckers that's three and a half hours long and has all kinds of CGI and special effects. Or a dream. Yeah, a really vivid, really nutty dream, and any minute now, Emma was going to wake up back in Mary Margaret's spare room. She would go downstairs and tell Mary Margaret about the super-bizarre dream she'd had, and the two of them would laugh it off, the intensity and urgency Emma felt fading in the light of day.

And yet, Emma somehow knew that was not going to happen. This _wasn't_ a dream. It was real, and Henry needed her to find the magic that would allow him to come back to the waking world … and back to her.

She had absolutely no idea what to do. This was way beyond anything she had ever thought possible, and truth be told, she was starting to panic.

She was tailspinning again, and it was once more fight or flight. This time, though, without even so much as a hesitation, she'd chosen fight.

Emma could only think of one person who could help her. The one person she could trust, the one person who had tried to tell her it was true and had gotten the cold shoulder for his troubles. After tucking the book under Henry's pillow and telling him it was for when he woke up – _when_, because she refused to think in terms of _if_ – she headed towards the hospital exit. She would scour the town if she had to, but she needed to find August.

Her mind was reeling so much from the whole fairy-tales-are-real aspect of Henry's theory that she didn't stop to think of the other implications of it. That is, until she almost crashed right into Mary Margaret Blanchard on her way out of the hospital.

Mary Margaret, who wasn't really Mary Margaret at all. No, she was Snow White.

And Emma's mother.

"Emma! Where are you going? Is Henry okay? Are _you_ okay?" She squinted at her friend in concern. "I think you might need to sit down. I don't like the look in your eyes."

For a brief moment, Emma couldn't speak. A very un-Emma-like thought ran through her head then, which was to dash forward, let Mary Margaret wrap her in a hug, and just stay there in her embrace for as long as she dared. She shook the thought from her head, which had the dual purpose of refusing Mary Margaret's offer of finding a place to sit. She answered her roommate's questions in reverse order. "I'm fine. Henry's stable. Regina and I are going–"

"You and Regina?" Mary Margaret – Snow White? – asked, her surprise evident. Further concern flooded her eyes. "I thought … it sounded on the phone like you thought Regina had something to do with this."

Oh, she absolutely had something to do it. She had more to do with it than Emma even imagined and more to do with it than Mary Margaret would ever believe. "I was upset," was all Emma said in return, because she didn't have time to explain. It was easier to let Mary Margaret think she had blamed Regina out of panic. "Can you do me a favor?"

"Anything."

"Will you sit with him? Regina and I are going to get something we think will help him."

The concern on Mary Margaret's face was replaced with confusion. "Something the hospital doesn't have?"

The hospital most certainly did not have what Henry needed at its disposal. "I'll explain later," Emma promised. "You just have to trust me right now; we _are_ doing what we can to help him. Will you please sit with him? I-I don't want him to be alone." _Just in case we don't make it back in time,_ she added silently, though her stomach lurched at the thought.

"Of course," Mary Margaret replied. She reached out and grasped Emma's hand, squeezing tightly. "You go do what you have to do."

As Emma squeezed Mary Margaret's hand back, she felt a burning in her eyes that was becoming far too familiar for her liking. "Thank you," she said around a sniffle.

"You're very welcome, Emma," Mary Margaret said with a kind smile.

"And the second anything changes–"

"I'll call you."

Emma gave her a tiny, grateful smile in return. As a matter of fact, she already felt a little calmer. Her head wasn't spinning as much anymore, at any rate. Whether it was Mary Margaret's presence in general that had calmed her or the new knowledge that Mary Margaret really was her mother like they joked, Emma had no idea.

At least certain things made sense now, like why Emma had felt so at ease with Mary Margaret. Why she had felt some kind of inexplicable connection with her. Why she had let Mary Margaret behind her walls more than she had ever let anyone else.

Even Mary Margaret's own gentle persistence and her patience with Emma made sense now. On some level, some basic human level that even magic couldn't touch, she must have been able to tell that Emma was someone special to her, just as Emma had sensed something special about Mary Margaret.

Her inner voice whispered a smug I told you so. _Touché_, Emma silently and cheekily answered.

The two women separated then, Mary Margaret heading towards Henry's room and Emma heading for the door. As she started on the walk – okay, power-walk, since she was a bit pressed for time – to the inn, she let the various details tumble over and over in her mind.

What else had Henry told her? Ashley was Cinderella. Ruby was Little Red Riding Hood. Ava and Nicholas were Hansel and Gretel. David Nolan was Prince Charming.

And Prince Charming was her father. David Nolan _was_ her father after all.

Holy _shit_.

When Emma was young, she'd given her parents plenty of fantasy identities. They were dignitaries from another country and she'd been kidnapped from them and hidden in the States. Or they were spies and had only given her away to keep her safe from the enemy spy agency. She'd even once written a school assignment about how her parents were a king and queen from a far-off land. Luckily, it had been a creative writing assignment – though, at this point, it wasn't far off the mark.

Then she got older and more jaded and figured the truth was something far more mundane, like her parents were junkies who couldn't care for her or that she was simply a mistake they didn't want.

But this? Her parents being Snow White and Prince Charming? That had never entered even her wildest dreams.

And now here she was, in front of a bed and breakfast owned by Granny of "What big eyes you have" fame, about to ask a grown-up Pinocchio for help finding magic.

Shit on a _stick_. If she ever wrote an autobiography, she would have to publish it as fiction.

Emma shook her head to clear it, set her shoulders, and strode through the entrance of the inn with purpose. Her mind could reel later. Right now, Henry needed her, which meant she needed August.


	28. Emma Swan, Dragon Slayer

**Author's Note:** Humor really isn't my strong suit (I've come to accept the fact that I'm only funny in fits and starts, haha), so I hope the first half of this chapter reads as at least kind of funny. *crosses fingers*

* * *

If either Gold or Regina had deigned to mention that Emma had to retrieve the one bit of magic left in this world from a goddamned _dragon_, she might have refused to go on her hero's quest.

Well, all right, she wouldn't have refused. Regardless of what she had to do, Henry still needed her and she would have done anything for that kid. Up to and including facing down a dragon, apparently. Still, a warning that she was going however many stories underground to meet up with a grown-up and pissed-off Spyro would not have gone unappreciated.

Wait a second. Would the Evil Queen or Rumpelstiltskin even understand that reference? Regina might, due to Henry's love of video games, but Gold most certainly wouldn't. Emma wearily swiped a hand across her forehead. Reality – well, fantasy that had become reality, she supposed – was starting to settle in, and it was making her brain hurt.

Clutching the golden egg she had retrieved from the ashes of the dragon, she headed back towards the elevator. As she once again came up to the glass coffin, she allowed herself a brief moment to pause beside it. Snow White's glass coffin. Mary Margaret's glass coffin.

Her mother's glass coffin.

She reached out and let her fingers brush the glass. It was cold and dirty but it was solid. She gasped and drew her hand away, then wondered why she had been surprised. Perhaps in the back of her mind she'd been assuming or hoping it was some kind of trick, some kind of optical illusion, and attempting to touch it would break the illusion.

But this was no illusion. That thing was real, and Mary Margaret had been inside it.

A shudder ran down her spine, bringing her back to the present. She had a mission to accomplish and it was only half-completed.

Only after climbing back into the elevator did it sink in that she'd just fought a dragon. An actual, real, live, fire-breathing _dragon_. And she'd won! She had embraced the fairy tale, pitched a sword at a freaking dragon, and somehow lived to tell the tale.

Holy._ Shit_.

No one would ever believe this. Hell, she lived it and she barely believed it. As it was, she had to pinch herself a couple of times to make sure she was awake and not having some sort of crazy, Henry-influenced dream.

The thought of Henry sobered her up a bit. Right, mission. She had a mission to complete. She hollered up to Regina to kick the elevator into gear. Nothing happened for a quite a while, long enough that Emma began to wonder if Regina could even hear her. She had no idea how far she'd descended but it had to be far enough that no one had ever heard the goddamned dragon walking around underneath their feet.

She pulled out her phone to call Regina instead, which would have been a fantastic idea except for one tiny problem: she had no service.

Emma was so annoyed that she almost pitched the phone against the wall of the elevator. She should have expected this, though. She had lost service every time she rode the T in Boston, for crying out loud. Why would she think she'd have service in a dragon's lair?

Just as Emma tucked the phone back into her pocket and tried to think of some other way to capture Regina's attention, the ancient machine stuttered into motion. Sound must have carried well through the elevator shaft because the only thing Emma could see above her was darkness.

With nothing to do but wait to arrive topside, Emma tiredly slumped against the back of the elevator – dragon-fighting was _exhausting_, apparently – and cradled the egg in her arms. The golden egg, let's not forget, she'd just retrieved from _inside a dragon_. No doubt about it, her life had taken a very sudden and very bizarre turn.

Since focusing on the details was proving too much for her, she tried to focus on reason for the mission. The egg contained the magic that would bring Henry back to her, which certainly made all the dragon-chasing and the sword-wielding and the mind-boggling worth it.

After all, the hard part was done. Now all she and Regina had to do was get back to–

The elevator shuddered to a stop, startling her out of her reverie. The hell?

She called up to Regina but it was Gold who answered her. Emma knew she shouldn't trust what he was telling her. She _knew_ she shouldn't, but panic, confusion, and anger did not lend themselves to careful thought. So she trusted Gold one final time, only to discover that trusting Rumpelstiltskin was not a thing that should happen frequently, if ever at all. He took off with the egg, leaving a gagged Regina tied to a chair and Emma stranded in an elevator shaft.

Oh, the next time Emma saw him? She was going to kick his teeth in.

That magic was Henry's, dammit, and she hadn't fought a goddamned dragon to get it for him just to have Rumpelstiltskin take off with it. After she untied Regina, the two of them made a silent agreement to chase after Gold.

Emma's ringing cell phone stopped her in her tracks. The sound of Regina's cell phone ringing at pretty much the exact same time sent Emma's heart into her stomach. Both of them getting calls at the same time could only mean one thing. A glance at the caller ID confirmed her suspicion: it was someone from the hospital.

To be honest, Emma didn't hear much of what the voice on the other end of the line said. All she heard was "Henry" and "called a code" and "we need you here as soon as possible." As she and Regina took off for the hospital – how Regina could all-out run in those heels, Emma would never understand – her phone started beeping like crazy.

Without even taking a moment to slow down, she whipped the phone from her pocket. Missed call notification after missed call notification began piling up on the screen, all of them from Mary Margaret. Damn it! She must have tried to call while Emma was underground, and now that she had service again, all the calls were hitting her phone at once.

When a voice mail notification popped up, Emma retrieved the message from a frantic Mary Margaret: "Emma, something's wrong with Henry. I don't know what it is but you need to come back to the hospital. I'm … they kicked me out of his room so I'm going to try to find you. If I can't, I'll head back to the hospital, but please call me as soon as you can."

She and Regina arrived at the hospital before she even had a chance to think about calling Mary Margaret back. They exchanged a loaded glance – anger on Emma's part, overwhelming guilt on Regina's, and abject terror from the both of them – before bursting through the entrance doors.

Funny how even after staring down certain death in the form of a fire-breathing dragon, climbing the stairs to Henry's room and not knowing what she would find when she got to the top was one of the most terrifying things Emma had ever done. _Just hang on, kid_, she thought. _I'm coming_.

Because Emma didn't fight a damn dragon for the kid just for it to end like this. It was going to be okay.

It just had to be okay.


	29. Spinning and Swirling

"Emma!" The gentle tugs at her hand hadn't been enough to capture her attention, so Henry was forced to up the stakes to a rough yank. "Emma, come on! We have to go!"

Blinking hard as if coming out of a daydream, Emma finally tore her eyes from the purple cloud writhing outside the hospital window and looked down at her son. Henry was staring up at her with an expression that was equal parts eagerness and panic. She gripped his hand tightly, feeling the warmth of his fingers around hers. Emma was not one to seek comfort in physical contact but this contact reassured her that he was _alive_. That he was okay. That she had called him back from the depths and that, shockingly, he had answered.

It was another few seconds before what he'd said to her registered. "Go?"

"Yes!" He shook his hand from hers before running back over to his bed. He tossed the blanket aside and lifted the sheet only to drop it in exasperation. "Do you know where they put my clothes?"

"Henry, I think you should–"

"Emma!" He sounded impatient now, causing her to arch an eyebrow at him. "Do you know where my clothes are? I can't leave until we find them."

"Whoa, slow down," Emma said, pressing a hand to her forehead. Things were moving entirely too fast for her. Henry had just been dead. Like, flatlined, no pulse, not breathing _dead_. Dr. Whale had called time of death and everything! The kid being up and walking around and talking was a flippin'

miracle, and now he wanted to leave, as in leave the hospital? Why the hell did he want to leave?

_Could_ they even leave? Something told her a patient didn't just walk away from a freaking resurrection, no questions asked. "Henry, you were just … you were ..."

_You were_ dead, she wanted to scream, if only to make him understand, but she couldn't seem to force the words out. "Can you please sit down and take it easy for a second?" was all she said instead.

He shook his head, a frown turning down the corners of his mouth. "No. We have to go find them. Don't you see, Emma? They know who they are now, which means they'll know who you are."

She turned his words over in her head a few times before she got it. Before she figured out who "they" were.

David and Mary Margaret. Prince Charming and Snow White.

Her parents.

Emma felt her ankles getting wobbly, her knees turning to jelly. Thank God for Henry's empty hospital bed because she ended up sitting down on it hard. Her breathing was ragged, coming out in short, quick pants. Holy crap, she was losing it.

_Stop,_ she commanded herself. First, her breathing. Deep breath in, controlled breath out. Deep breath in, controlled breath out. It took a few moments but soon she was able to breathe normally. Then she switched her attention to trying to quiet her swirling thoughts.

That proved far more difficult. She'd just found out that magic was real, that the stories she grew up hearing were true, and that her parents were freaking _Snow White and Prince Charming._ She'd attended a meeting with Rumpelstiltskin and the Evil Queen, watched a grown man turn to wood, fought a dragon, revived her son with the power of True Love's Kiss, and broken the Dark Curse. And now Emma had to meet her parents? The parents she'd spent her entire life believing had thrown her along the side of the road like a piece of garbage?

"Too fast" didn't even begin to cover the pace at which things were moving.

This was _not_ how finding her parents was supposed to happen. It was a search and an outcome that was supposed to have been on her terms. Emma had thought she would be able to observe them from afar for a while first, see what they were like. And then, after watching them a while and working up her courage, she could go give them a piece of her mind.

She supposed she had observed David and Mary Margaret here in Storybrooke, but that hardly counted. She hadn't known they were her parents then. But they _were_ her parents, and now she knew them. She knew them and_ liked_ them, her annoyance with David on Mary Margaret's behalf notwithstanding. David had never done anything egregious to Emma herself, certainly nothing to warrant the vitriol she'd planned to spew at her parents. And Mary Margaret? How could she spew vitriol at Mary Margaret? She was … _Mary Margaret_, for crying out loud.

This wasn't … fair. Or right. It certainly wasn't how she'd ever dreamed meeting her parents would go.

Henry's bustling around the room finally caught Emma's eye. She reached out, grabbed hold of his hand, and tugged him down on the edge of the bed with her. "Will you please slow down? You were just ..." The little furrowed brow made it clear that Henry had absolutely no idea how serious his condition had been. "I almost lost you. Can you just sit for a second? Please?"

His features softened a little in understanding, though she knew he simply understood that she was worried about him. He still hadn't comprehended the fact that he had died for a few minutes. Maybe he shouldn't ever understand that, though. He was just a kid. Maybe she should just let him think he was only in a slumber that mimicked death, like Snow White.

The two of them sat in silence for a few seconds, but those few seconds were apparently all Henry could allow. His voice was soft when he spoke up again. "Emma, we need to go find them. They're going to want to see you, make sure you're okay."

"I'm fine," she said even though she was anything but.

"They're going to want to _see_ that, though," Henry told her gently. "If you were separated from me and someone told you I was fine, would you believe them? Or would you want to see it for yourself?"

That'd be the day she took anyone at their word in a situation like the one Henry described. She would move heaven and earth if she had to but she'd definitely need to see with her own eyes that the kid was okay.

Aw, crap. Now she understood what he'd been trying to tell her. Swallowing hard, she met his eyes and nodded. "I'll find your clothes. Just stay here and relax."

He opened his mouth to protest but she gave a quick shake of her head, stopping his argument before he could get out even one word of it. "You've been through a lot in the past few hours. Humor me, okay?"

He nodded in acquiescence, which both shocked and pleased Emma. She had expected an argument but was glad it hadn't come down to one. Now to find Henry's clothes.

She remembered seeing the nurses packing his clothes and backpack into a big plastic bag when he arrived at the hospital but where that bag had ended up was anyone's guess. She finally found it in the far corner of the room. She walked back over to the bed, handing Henry the bag. "Thanks," he said as he took it from her. "Can I go change now?"

Emma wanted to tell him no, if only so that they wouldn't be able to leave, but the poor kid's teeth had started to chatter. Figuring her son getting warm was far more important than her upcoming emotional upheaval, she nodded at him.

As soon as Henry disappeared into the bathroom to change, Emma set about tracking down Dr. Whale. She finally found him at the emergency room reception desk. "I'm sorry for asking this in the middle of everything," she said to the doctor, "but Henry's chomping at the bit to leave. Is it okay if we go? Medically, I mean?"

After the words left her mouth, it hit her that Dr. Whale might not even be a real doctor. Who was he back in the Enchanted Forest? Henry had never told her.

Her fears were assuaged slightly when he gave her a nod. "He's doing quite well, considering. His vitals are all normal. I can give him a once-over if you'd like, but I have no problem discharging him."

Real doctor or not, the man had practiced medicine for twenty-eight years, which was exactly twenty-eight years longer than Emma had. A professional eye looking over the kid would set her mind at ease. "If you wouldn't mind giving him a quick checkup, that'd be great."

"Of course," Whale said, smiling a smile she swore was genuine. It was certainly more genuine than any smile she'd seen on him previously. Actually, now that she thought about it, she couldn't recall ever seeing him smile before.

Henry stepped out of the bathroom to find Emma and Dr. Whale waiting for him. Emma explained about the checkup before leaving. Henry protested, of course, because what ten-year-old enjoyed sitting through a checkup? Emma hushed him and Dr. Whale got to work.

A few minutes later, Dr. Whale proclaimed Henry healthy as a horse. The kid shot an I-told-you-so look at Emma, who answered it with a no-nonsense look of her own. "Thank you, Dr. Whale," she said.

"You're very welcome," the doctor replied. "It's great seeing you up and about, Henry." He smiled again before walking out the door, leaving Emma and Henry to get themselves situated in private.

"_Now_ can we go find David and Mary Margaret?" Henry asked, the impatience returning to his voice.

"Hey," Emma chided. She didn't want to come right out and tell him to watch his tone but the single word seemed to get the point across. With no other reasons for procrastination, though, and because she was trying not to excite Henry too much after his ordeal, she had no other choice but to nod an agreement to her son.

Grinning widely, Henry latched onto her hand. He pulled her out of the room and through the hospital doors, babbling about how he bet her parents couldn't wait to see her.

They may not have been able to wait to see her but she wasn't quite sure she wanted to see them. Not yet, not before she'd had a chance to get used to the idea. For Christ's sake, she'd been living with her mother all this time and never knew! She much preferred it when  
she and Mary Margaret simply joked about Mary Margaret being Emma's mother.

Wait a second, maybe Henry was wrong. Not that he'd been wrong about the rest of it, but that was beside the point. Maybe he'd gotten this part of it wrong. Maybe David and Mary Margaret weren't her parents after all.

She was surprised to feel a twinge of sadness at the thought.

_Make up your damn mind_, she thought, rolling her eyes at herself. Did she want them to be her parents or didn't she? She had no flipping clue. Her head was spinning and she was finding it rather hard to think straight.

"There they are," Henry whispered, once again tugging at her hand.

What? Already? Hadn't they just left the hospital? This search had not taken enough time in the slightest. But Henry was right, as usual. David and Mary Margaret stood ahead of them in the street, exchanging hugs with Ruby and Granny and a group of men including Mr. Clark and … Leroy? Seriously?

"You ready?" Henry asked, looking up at Emma with a bright smile.

Not at all. She managed to shoot a tiny smile at Henry, though, as he pulled her forward.

It was now or never.


	30. Reunion

**Author's Note:** I'm not the most comfortable with the adding inner monologue to televised scenes thing, but I just could not bypass this. And then I sort of got over my discomfort with republishing the show's dialogue by tacking a little bit of my own stuff onto the end. ;) Also, I just wanted to say once again that you guys are amazing. I was shocked and in awe at receiving 100 reviews on one of my works. Now this is coming up on 200, and I just can't even. Thank you all for your lovely words of encouragement from the bottom of my heart.

* * *

Later on, Emma wouldn't be able to recall what she even said. All she knew was that she heard Mary Margaret saying she needed to find her daughter. The outside confirmation threw Emma for such a loop that she'd said … something. Mary Margaret turned around at the sound of her voice, and that was when Emma realized that this woman was not Mary Margaret at all.

She held herself completely differently. She stood up straighter. She had a strength in her shoulders that Emma had never once seen in the young schoolteacher she'd befriended. There was something different in her eyes, too, something Emma couldn't put into words but knew was changed. A brightness ... or maybe a spark. And when her eyes landed on her daughter, Emma could see love and warmth and guilt and pain and pride all rolled into one.

Her mouth working a little as if she wanted to say something but didn't know what, she slowly approached Emma and cupped her cheeks in her hands. Emma could only stand there and allow her to do it. She wanted to pull away, wanted to ask Mary Margaret what the hell she thought she was doing, but something within her that she didn't really understand made her stay. Which was fine, really, because she was too overwhelmed to do anything else.

So Emma stayed. She stayed even when Mary Margaret let go of her cheeks and pulled her into a hug, her face crumpling. "You found us," she murmured into Emma's ear, her tears muffling her words ever so slightly.

_You found us_. How could three little words be so loaded? Emma had poked around in Henry's book enough to know what those words meant in terms of the story. Snow White and Prince Charming always found each other. Always. It stood to reason that their daughter would follow in their footsteps.

But those three words also signaled the culmination of Emma's own lifelong search. Her parents. She'd _finally_ found her parents. All that research, all those dead ends, all that time and energy … and she'd found them here in Storybrooke without meaning to, without ever expecting it.

Everything within her itched to pull away and shrink from her mother's grip. Her mother hadn't earned the right to hug her, goddamn it. This hug was the kind of hug she should have had from birth. The hug a sick four-year-old should have gotten to help her feel better, the hug a frightened eight-year-old should have received to console her after a bad dream. The hug a lonely thirteen-year-old should have had to remind her that someone somewhere did in fact care about her.

The angry adult in Emma wished she could push Mary Margaret away but the hurt and lonely child within her just wanted her mother to hold her and make everything better. It was the child that made her stay when Mary Margaret caressed her cheeks, Emma realized now. The hurt and lonely little girl who had yearned for this for so long and was finally getting what no child should ever have to fight for: someone to love her. And it was the child making her stay now, making her stay in her mother's arms because it just felt … _right_.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw David approaching them, slowly, hesitantly, as if he couldn't believe his own eyes. As he drew closer, Emma realized that David wasn't David anymore, either. Like Mary Margaret, his eyes were different, and he now looked at Emma much the same way Mary Margaret had when Emma first spoke. Before she knew it, he placed his hand on the back of her head and started pulling her slightly towards him.

Mary Margaret refused to let go, so they ended up in a kind of group hug. Which was entirely too much physical contact for Emma, to be completely honest, but the hurt child still refused to give up the affection. So she stood there and let her parents hug her while both sides of her – angry adult and lonely child – battled for dominance.

Thank God for Henry's little, "Grandpa?" That seemed to break the spell holding them all captive. Poor choice in metaphors aside, Emma was relieved when Mary Margaret and David – or Snow White and Prince Charming, she supposed – released her to address Henry.

"Yeah, kid," David chuckled. "I suppose so."

_Hey, that's _my_ nickname for him_, Emma thought. She was about to tell him to find his own damn nickname when Henry spoke up again. "She did it. She saved you."

"She saved all of us," Mary Margaret said, her hands lightly gripping Emma's arms. Both her voice and her eyes clearly held pride, but there was something else in there, too, reassurance Snow White could only know Emma needed from her time as Mary Margaret. She wanted Emma to understand exactly what she'd done and that she'd done a great thing.

That she was a hero.

But she _wasn't_ a hero. She hadn't done a damn thing, at least not on purpose. All she'd done was say goodbye to Henry, and the only reason she'd had to say goodbye to Henry was because she'd allowed Gold to steal the magic that Henry needed.

Whoa, hold on a second. When the elevator stopped, Gold had promised her that Henry was going to be fine. He'd already decided to take the magic from her at that point, so assuming they weren't empty words to placate her, he must have known that she would be able to wake Henry up on her own. Which begged the question: had Henry ever really needed the magic at all?

Emma had always thought Glinda in _The Wizard of Oz _was annoying for making Dorothy trek all the way through Oz before telling her she had the means to send herself home. If Gold even sent her down to that dragon on an errand for himself disguised as something she needed to do for Henry instead of just telling her to try giving the kid a peck on the cheek …

Somehow her train of thought had gotten way off-track. How had she gotten here? Oh, right, not meaning to break the curse. "I … well …"

This time Leroy was the one who captured everyone's attention, thank merciful heaven. Emma only half-heard the conversation, considering her own mind was still reeling from … everything. When Emma heard Mother Superior – who was the Blue Fairy ... seriously? – mentioning magic wands and flippin' fairy dust, she really wished she could find somewhere to sit down.

Then their discussion finally registered. They wanted to stomp down the street and blame Regina for magic coming to Storybrooke. But Regina hadn't done it.

Oh, whoa,_ this_ was Gold's plan all along! He made Emma retrieve the leftover magic he'd hidden for safekeeping, knowing it would be brought over when the curse came. Then he used that magic somehow to bring magic to all of Storybrooke.

"No, wait," she said, louder and stronger than she really felt. All eyes turned to her, but for some reason, she focused on Mary Margaret. "It wasn't Regina."

A frown flickered across Mary Margaret's face but after seeing the certainty in Emma's eyes, she nodded. "If it wasn't Regina, there's only one other person it could have been ..."

"Rumpelstiltskin," David finished in unison with her.

All right, now Emma was really weirded out. David and Mary Margaret – two people she'd watched go through a rather unhealthy relationship only to have it end in heartache for both of them – were finishing each other's sentences, for crying out loud. This was just entirely too much. "Yeah."

_So eloquent, Swan_, she thought, rolling her eyes at herself.

"So let's go ask Rumpelstiltskin," Leroy amended, though Emma swore she heard a little bit more tremor in his voice this time around.

As they started down the street, Mary Margaret reached down to take Emma's hand. Emma deftly ducked out of her reach, sidling up to Henry instead while making it look like she had no idea she'd just slighted her mother. It appeared the angry adult had wrested control back from the lonely child. She'd allowed her parents to hug her, and that was fine for that once. But holding hands? That was just a bit too much too soon.


	31. Welcome to the Bottom

At first, Emma felt peaceful. She was smack in the middle of that moment between sleep and wakefulness, that little slice of serenity that results when a sound sleep has yet to be fully broken. As her sluggish mind struggled to become more aware, however, she realized that she was really freaking uncomfortable. Her entire body ached, and her head was pounding.

She tried to shift into a more comfortable position but her muscles screamed at the effort. The pain forced her brain into a bit more awareness, and suddenly she realized she didn't remember falling asleep. And that she was lying on something hard and jagged. Also, now she could hear voices. Dulled voices, as if she was trying to hear a conversation underwater, but somehow she knew that the voices were unfamiliar to her.

She still wasn't quite awake, but the serenity had vanished. Now it felt like trying to bring herself out of a nightmare; she knew something was wrong but couldn't seem to wake herself up. She tried to say something but the only thing that escaped her lips was a groan.

"Wait. I think they're coming to."

That was one of the voices Emma didn't recognize. Female from the sound of it, though her hearing was still a little dulled. Female and frightened.

Another sound filled her ear. A moan, she realized a moment later, a pained moan. Then she heard a gasp and felt a rough tug on her jacket. "Emma? Can you hear me?"

Emma knew that voice; she'd know it anywhere. It was Mary Margaret.

"Who are you?" A third voice, female again but hard and angry.

"Snow White," she replied with an edge that Emma never remembered hearing from meek little Mary Margaret. Her voice turned gentle, if concerned, as she once again addressed her daughter. "Emma, can you hear me?"

She tried to answer in the affirmative but once again could only groan. What the hell was going on? Gathering all the strength and energy she had, she tried to force herself into a sitting position.

"Whoa, easy," Mary Margaret instructed. "Open your eyes first, Emma."

"Why did you bring the wraith here?" That was from the angry voice. Emma scrunched her brow in confusion. Bring the wraith where?

"You will get your answers once I'm sure that she's all right."

If Emma could have raised her eyebrows, she would have. The harsh tone of her friend's voice was nothing like the kind, gentle one she was used to hearing from Mary Margaret. "I'm all right," she finally managed to mumble. She forced her eyes open and pushed herself up onto her elbows. "Christ, my head is _killing_ me." Shifting her weight onto her left elbow, she raised her right hand to massage her throbbing head and shut her eyes again. Keeping them open hurt too damn much.

"Emma, I need you to look at me," Mary Margaret said gently.

"Enough of this," interrupted Angry Voice.

"Mulan, stop. They're clearly hurt." That was from the woman with the frightened voice from earlier.

Mulan? Seriously? Emma groaned again, though this groan had absolutely nothing to do with her injuries.

She tried to sit up a little straighter but hands on her shoulders held her down to steady her. Gentle hands, gentle but strong. _At least it's Mary Margaret_, she thought, wriggling against the grip. A moment later, the hands disappeared. Emma let out a breath of relief that Mary Margaret had gotten the hint.

As she opened her eyes again, she noted with some concern that her hands had started to tingle. The pins and needles started at the pinky finger and worked their way across her entire hand. Since the sensation was symmetrical, she tried not to worry about it too much.

"How many fingers am I holding up?" Mary Margaret asked her, recapturing her attention. She waved three fingers in front of Emma's face.

"Fifteen." The look on Mary Margaret's face plainly indicated that she did not appreciate the joke. Emma suddenly felt like a small child being scolded for fidgeting at the table, which she quickly decided she did not like at all. "Three. I'm fine."

"Now that everyone is _fine_," Angry Voice, who was apparently freakin' Mulan, said with a sneer, "perhaps the two of you can explain yourselves."

The tingling in Emma's hands had finally stopped. Flexing her fingers to shake off the remnants of the pins and needles, she looked around for the first time. A large, imposing structure lying in ruin filled her field of vision to left. She and Mary Margaret were sitting amidst rubble. A woman in a long purple dress and wispy shawl stood slightly behind a woman dressed as a warrior.

Oh, holy crap! The warrior had her sword pointed at Mary Margaret's throat! Emma started to scramble to her side in an effort to put herself between her friend – mother … whatever – and the sword. Without taking her eyes off the warrior, Mary Margaret grasped Emma's hand and squeezed. Emma had no idea how she recognized the gesture as a warning, but she did, freezing in place.

What in the hell was going on?

The last thing she remembered was Regina trying to make Jefferson's magic hat work while David and Mary Margaret fended off the wraith. No, wait, she remembered something after that. Regina had managed to get the hat to work but only after Emma grabbed her arm. She remembered feeling … something when she touched Regina, something that felt like a shock of static electricity. Then what? The hat had started spinning, and the wraith finally broke through, heading straight towards Regina. Emma had shoved her out of the way, and then … she was falling.

But falling where? Why was Mary Margaret with her? And, most importantly, where the hell were they?

"We didn't _send_ the wraith here," Mary Margaret argued. Emma blinked, realizing that she'd lost track of the conversation. "We_ followed_ it here."

"Followed from where?"

"Another realm. A town named Storybrooke."

What on earth was Mary Margaret talking about? "Another realm?" she hissed. "Another realm other than what?"

"Other than this one," Mary Margaret answered quickly before once again focusing her attention on Mulan. "We mean you no harm. May we please get up out of this rubble?"

Mulan glanced at the woman in the purple dress, who gave her an uncertain look in return. There was a split second of silent conversation between the two women before Mulan said, "Aurora, get the ropes."

Aurora? As in Princess Aurora? As in Sleeping Beauty, Princess Aurora? The throbbing in Emma's head suddenly got a lot worse. "Mary Margaret, what the hell is going on? Where are we?"

"Later, Emma," Mary Margaret replied, her eyes never leaving Mulan. Her tone, though, left nothing to the imagination. She was trying to shut Emma up.

Emma felt her anger rising. She didn't want to know later, she wanted to know _now_. She had no freaking clue what was happening or how it had happened in the first place. Something about Mary Margaret's posture, however, told her not to argue.

Aurora quickly returned with rope, which she and Mulan wrapped around Emma's and Mary Margaret's wrists. They used knots Emma had never seen before, which sent her heart into her stomach. There went any slim chance of working herself free from the ropes.

"On your feet," Mulan ordered. Despite her severe misgivings, Emma found herself complying with the warrior's instruction.

Once certain the two newcomers could not and would not attempt escape, Mulan finally dropped her weapon. "Now the horses, Aurora," she instructed as she began fastening lengths of rope to the loops around Mary Margaret's wrists.

Mary Margaret shut her eyes for a brief moment, her shoulders drooping. Emma did not like the defeated expression on her face. At all. "All right, seriously, Mary Margaret," she whispered helplessly. "What the hell is going on?"

"The hat sent us to our land," Mary Margaret informed her.

Emma's stomach roiled. _Our_ land? As in the Enchanted Forest? As in, they had fallen through a magic portal to the Enchanted Forest? "But Regina said your land was destroyed."

"We're in the Enchanted Forest," Mary Margaret confirmed, looking directly into Emma's eyes with both sorrow that she couldn't protect her from this and pleading for Emma to understand how serious their predicament was, "and we're prisoners."


	32. Lost and Found

From like, the exact second they had arrived in the Enchanted Forest, Mary Margaret had taken to treating Emma as if she were about eight years old. With her instruction not to talk to Cora, she might as well have scolded her for talking to strangers – in front of the damn stranger. Then she decided it would be okay to correct Emma's admittedly unfortunate confusion of ogres and giants in public and with a hand-pat, for crying out loud.

It was embarrassing. And really damn irritating to boot.

Emma had grown up just fine without a mother. She'd had to teach herself all kinds of things that her mother should have taught her. She hadn't been there to teach her those lessons, and she was about twenty years too late to do so now.

The angry adult in Emma wanted to prove to her mother just how much she did _not_ need her. The lonely child within her simply wanted her mother to be proud of the woman she'd become. Which made it all the more maddening that she was floundering here.

Emma had always thought she was a survivor. She'd lived through the foster system and life on the run and jail, and she'd come out the other side of it intact. Able to make a living, able to put her skill set to good use, able to take care of herself. Hell, she'd fought a damn _dragon_ in Storybrooke. Here, though … here, up was down and down was up. Everything Emma knew, everything she had learned the hard way … it was all worthless.

Both the adult and the child within her were disappointed with her performance here. All she'd done was screw everything up to the point that, if Mary Margaret hadn't come to her rescue, she would have been ogre chow.

That was another thing, by the way. Mary Margaret didn't do a lot of rescuing back in Storybrooke. Well, not the physical kind of rescuing. She'd done plenty of the emotional kind of rescuing, Emma supposed. The point was, back in Storybrooke, Emma took care of Mary Margaret, not the other way around. This woman was nothing like the Mary Margaret she knew. She was strong. She was a fighter. She could shoot goddamned _arrows_! Her aim never wavered and she'd felled the monster with one quick shot to the eye.

Her mother was freaking _badass_.

Badass was not an adjective she would use to describe the Storybrooke version of Mary Margaret. Kind, gentle, sweet, tender, in need of protection from the big bad world … those all described the Mary Margaret Emma knew.

This Enchanted Forest version of Mary Margaret certainly didn't need protecting. And if she didn't need Emma to protect her, what use did she have for her at all?

Emma let out a heavy sigh as she fidgeted on the ground, trying to find a position comfortable enough for sleep. After a bit more squirming, she proclaimed the task hopeless. The ground was cold and hard, and her jacket was doubling as her pillow. Throw in an earlier encounter with an ogre that had absolutely none of Shrek's personality and charm, and sleep was pretty much an impossibility. Which was really freaking annoying because she was _exhausted_.

"Can't sleep?" a soft voice whispered into her right ear.

She turned her head in the direction of the voice to find Mary Margaret taking a seat on the ground next to her. "I thought you were on watch."

"I am, but all's quiet." She lay down on her back, interlacing her fingers behind her head.

Emma nodded while fighting the urge to scoot away from her a little bit. There was no doubt in her mind that Mary Margaret had invaded her personal bubble on purpose. Instead, she returned her attention to the night sky, watching the stars twinkle against the vast blackness. Without artificial lights marring the landscape, the stars seemed impossibly bright. "At least the moon and the stars are the same."

"Did you really expect them not to be?"

"They weren't in _Land of the Lost_," she pointed out. A quick glance over at Mary Margaret indicated that she didn't understand the joke. All right, so pop culture references from Emma's childhood were lost on no-longer-cursed fairy tale characters. Good to know. "Never mind."

Though Mary Margaret clearly had no idea what Emma was talking about, she gave her a small smile before following her daughter's gaze to the sky. "No, the moon and stars are the same. As a matter of fact, they're the same moon and stars that Charming and Henry can see out the windows tonight. This may sound a little silly, but thinking of that helps me feel closer to them. At this very moment, they could be looking up at the sky like we are, wondering if we can see the moon and stars like they can."

Emma's eyes had started to burn with tears the second Mary Margaret mentioned Henry. How was he doing? Was he okay? Who was taking care of him? She sniffed back her tears, and then, to cover her emotional weakness, she asked, "Who are you, freakin' Fievel?"

At Mary Margaret's perplexed look, Emma almost groaned. Her resolution not to make childhood pop culture references hadn't even lasted two goddamned minutes.

Then she felt a surge of anger. Her mother _should_ be able to understand a joke like that. If Emma had grown up with her mother, then surely Mary Margaret would have rented _An American Tail_ for her or sat through airings of_ Land of the Lost _on Saturday mornings. But no. Mary Margaret had sent her off to a world she knew absolutely nothing about completely alone, and now she knew absolutely nothing about Emma's childhood.

"You should try to get some sleep," Mary Margaret said softly after a long beat of silence.

_Yeah, no kidding,_ Emma thought. As if she didn't know she needed to sleep. "Yeah, well, I don't think sleep's going to happen tonight," she muttered, shrugging halfheartedly.

"You still rattled from the ogre?"

Among other things. "Not really," she said in an effort to save a tiny bit of face. "Although, if some enterprising ogre were to invent and market some form of ogre Tic-Tacs, that would not be unwelcome." When she heard Mary Margaret chuckle, she smiled in relief. At least one of her jokes had had the intended effect. "It's more that I was never a huge fan of camping out."

Not that she'd really had the opportunity, but that was beside the point.

"You get used to it," Mary Margaret assured her.

Emma didn't think she wanted to get used to it. She shifted again, remaining on her back but tucking her right arm under her head in an effort to recreate normal pillow height.

"When the Huntsman spared me, I had no survival experience whatsoever. Over time, though, and with the help of some friends I made along the way, I learned."

She did not mistake the obvious life lesson in her mother's statement. She was just too tired to take umbrage to it. She allowed her eyes to slide closed as Mary Margaret continued to talk about her first night on the run and how she'd come to meet Red.

What seemed to Emma like moments later, she started awake from a falling dream. "Whoa, wait a sec," she mumbled when her eyes snapped open. "Are you trying to talk me to sleep like the night you were released from jail?"

"It was working," Mary Margaret replied, her voice soft. "You just have to let it."

Emma heaved a sigh but now that she'd almost been asleep, she couldn't keep her eyes from closing again. Mary Margaret picked the story back up, though she continued from a point Emma didn't remember hearing.

The next thing Emma knew, she was waking up because her right arm had gone completely numb. Damn, she must have been lying on her arm for at least a couple of hours for it to fall asleep to that point. Whimpering softly, she withdrew her arm from under her head, rested it on her stomach, and tried to ignore the ache as blood began flowing into the limb again.

Only then did she become aware of two voices talking in hushed tones. She was about to sit up and find out what was going on when the conversation froze her in place.

"I happened to overhear what you yelled to the ogre." Though the voice was just a whisper, it sounded to Emma like Mulan. "Emma is your daughter?"

"Yes." That was Mary Margaret, obviously.

"May I ask ..."

"How it's possible?" A hint of a sigh. "She escaped Regina's curse. I didn't. The land the wardrobe sent her to was … not unkind, necessarily, but a bit uncaring. Too busy to take special notice of a lonely little girl, at any rate. She's endured a lot, far more than I ever dreamed of or intended."

Mulan was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke up again, it was with sudden understanding. "You feel guilty."

"We lost all that time together," Mary Margaret confirmed, "time we can never get back. Her life was unbelievably difficult, and I'm to blame for it. If I had it to do over, though, I'd do it again in a heartbeat. How selfish would I have been to allow her to be cursed alongside everyone else when she had means of escape? She was my baby, my beautiful baby girl. I couldn't bear to think of her being cursed. She got to have a _life_, even though it was one without me or her father." She sighed again. "I just don't believe she sees it that way."

"I'm sure she will eventually," Mulan said after a beat.

"I'm not so sure, but thank you."

Mary Margaret bid Mulan good night after that. Emma lay still with her eyes closed even as Mary Margaret ran her thumb over her cheek as a good night gesture before lying down next to her. She waited for Mary Margaret's breathing to even out before pushing herself up onto her elbows.

"You heard every word of that, didn't you."

It was not a question. Emma gasped, turning her head in the direction of the soft voice. Mulan was sitting on the fallen log in the middle of their camp, the one Mary Margaret had occupied when Emma first went to bed. The warrior must have relieved Mary Margaret on watch so that she could get a little bit of sleep before they broke camp. "Not all of it," Emma admitted sheepishly. "Just most of it."

"She cares for you."

"I know she does," Emma insisted. "And I care about her. It's just … hard."

Mulan regarded her with a surprising amount of sympathy. "If I may speak freely ..." Emma raised her eyebrows before giving her a nod. "I don't pretend to understand what you went through, nor do I pretend to understand what either you or she must be feeling. That being said, which option is harder: being lost and found, or being lost forever?"

Emma blinked hard. She had never thought about it that way before, something she had a funny feeling that Mulan suspected. "Just something to ponder," the warrior gently added. "You should try to go back to sleep. We only have a couple of hours before we have to get moving again."

After giving Mulan a quick nod, Emma settled back down. She shut her eyes and tried to find a comfortable position. As she squirmed, Mary Margaret reached for her hand and squeezed once before letting go. The action reminded her of the times Mary Margaret had grabbed her hand in her sleep back in Storybrooke. She was surprised to feel her heart ache at the memory.

Which _was_ harder, being lost and found or being lost forever? As hard as all this reconnection stuff was, would she really trade it for never finding her parents at all? Never knowing?

Mulan's question was still bouncing around in Emma's head as she drifted back to sleep.


	33. Feel the Silence

**Author's Note: **I had originally only intended to take this up to the reunion scene in "Broken" but then after "Lady of the Lake" aired, I figured post-nursery scene would be a better stopping point. I want to thank each and every one of you who has followed this story over the past couple of months. This is the longest fic I've ever written, and both the word and page counts are a little overwhelming. Even more overwhelming (and I mean that in the best way possible) are the review, favorite, and follow counts for this sucker. I know I've said it before but I'll say it again: you guys are fantastic. Thank you so much for all your lovely comments, reviews, and words of encouragement.

* * *

It wasn't until Emma stood in the middle of what would have – and, by all rights, _should_ have – been her nursery and really drank in the details of the space that she understood. Parents who didn't want a child didn't set up the child's living space with such loving care. Parents who planned to send their child off to an unknown world didn't choose stuffed animals and toys and bassinets for that child.

The curse had stripped her parents of _everything_ – of their love for each other, their happiness, and their dreams. The one thing her parents had managed to hold onto in the face of it all was their hope, because their hope had escaped minutes before the curse ravaged the land.

Their hope was their daughter.

Looking at this room now, there was no doubt in Emma's mind that she was wanted. Before she was even born, she'd been loved. And if not for the curse, Emma would have been cherished.

She hadn't seen herself as a victim of the curse, not until Mary Margaret told her that she hadn't even had the chance to spend one night in the nursery her parents had so lovingly prepared for her. That was when she finally grasped everything the curse had robbed from her, too: her home and her life with her family and the love of her parents.

But there was still a lingering question. If Mary Margaret had really loved her that much, how could she have let her go? It wasn't until Emma set fire to the wardrobe to keep Cora from using it that she understood the sacrifice her own mother had made. The thought of Cora getting to Henry sent Emma into a panic. The only thing on her mind had been making sure Cora had no way of reaching him, even if it meant stranding herself here and never seeing him again.

And all of a sudden, she understood why Mary Margaret had sent her away. She'd panicked at the thought of the curse claiming her baby and had tried to keep her safe in the only way she could.

It was almost enough to make her cry. Oh, who the hell was she kidding? It _did_ make her cry, and when Mary Margaret wrapped her arms around her in the kind of comforting embrace filled with warmth and love Emma had yearned for all her life, she could only squeeze her eyes shut against the tears and let her mother hold her.

Tears dried and emotions shaken off, Emma and Mary Margaret met up with Aurora and Mulan at the castle gates. The foursome headed back for the haven, trekking through the woods until they ran out of daylight. They set up camp for the night, with Mary Margaret offering to take first watch. Emma surprised pretty much everyone – herself included – by offering to stay up with her.

Now mother and daughter were seated on the ground at the edge of the campsite, eyes and ears open and weapons at the ready. Mary Margaret had stuck with her trusty bow and arrows, but Mulan had given Emma the use of her sword with the caveat of getting it back when she took over for them in a few hours.

It was quiet, so quiet that Emma's whispered, "Mary Margaret?" seemed deafening.

"Hmm?"

"Can I ask you something?"

Mary Margaret tore her gaze from the woods beyond and looked at her daughter, trying hard to contain her surprise. "You can ask me anything."

Emma wasn't entirely sure she wanted to ask her question, mostly because she feared the answer. She had Mary Margaret's attention now, though; she had to go through with it. After taking a deep breath, she asked, "How come you and David didn't come with me?"

At first, it appeared as if the question had startled Mary Margaret. As she met Emma's eyes, however, she understood exactly why Emma had been so hesitant with her since they arrived in the Enchanted Forest. Her poor daughter had spent all this time thinking they had sent her through the wardrobe alone on purpose. "Oh, Emma, it wasn't like that at all. Magic isn't infinite; the wardrobe could only protect one from the curse. We had planned for me to go through and raise you by myself in the new land, but you were born early. Sending you by yourself was never an option … until it became the only one we had. I never wanted this for you, Emma, I promise. I just could not let you be cursed along with everyone else."

"Because I was the savior?"

"No," she said, her brow wrinkling slightly as if she couldn't understand why Emma even had to ask that question. "Because you're my daughter."

Emma swallowed hard in an attempt to dislodge the lump that had risen in her throat. She knew how awful it felt to have the best intentions for her child only to find out that the child had ended up in a situation she never would have wanted.

But wait a minute. August was Pinocchio. He told Emma he'd gone through ahead of her. Mary Margaret hadn't lied to her; she truly believed that the wardrobe could only protect one. But if that were true, how did it have enough magic to save Pinocchio, too?

Emma opened her mouth to bring up exactly that point but the pain on her mother's face stopped her. Their conversation had already upset her enough. Telling her that August was Pinocchio would only make things worse.

No, she couldn't tell her right now. Later on when things calmed down, but not right now.

She was so lost in thought that Mary Margaret's faint gasp startled her. She reached for Mulan's sword but relaxed when she noticed that her mother hadn't jumped to her feet, ready to defend. "What's the matter?"

"Oh, I'm sorry!" Mary Margaret replied, realizing for the first time that she'd just given her daughter a mini-heart attack. "Nothing's the matter. I just saw a shooting star."

Emma didn't have the heart to answer her mother's awe with sarcasm. She raised her eyes to the sky instead, but whatever Mary Margaret had seen was long gone. "We should watch the next meteor shower. You'd love it."

"I've always wanted to watch one."

"I watched one once." Emma leaned back on her hands, her palms pressing against the ground. She stretched her legs out in front of her and gazed up at the sky, smiling at the memory. "Matthew took me out during the summer one, whichever one that is. He woke me up at some ridiculous time and dragged me to the back yard. I had no idea why until he told me to look up. There were so many stars streaking across the sky that you couldn't even keep track of them all."

She chanced a peek at Mary Margaret, who had trained her eyes on her daughter and was smiling gently at the story. "How long did you stay outside?"

"To be honest with you, I have no idea. I must have fallen asleep after a while because the next thing I remember is waking up in my room. The next morning at breakfast, we were both so scared that someone had caught us – the adults, one of the other kids, _someone_ – but no one said a word about it. Matthew put his finger to his lips and winked, and from then on, it was our little secret."

The flurry of emotion on Mary Margaret's face indicated that although she loved hearing about this lovely moment from her daughter's childhood, it pained her that she had been unable to share it with her. "Have you ever tried to find Matthew?"

At that, Emma tore her eyes from her mother's. Her failure to find Matthew was almost as disappointing as her inability to track down her parents. "I've tried, but I was really young when I lived with him. There are so many things I don't remember … the family's name, his last name. I have the city and state we lived in but that's about it." She shrugged halfheartedly. "It doesn't matter. We lived together for ten months over twenty years ago. He probably doesn't even remember me."

Mary Margaret was quiet for a long moment. Even without looking at her, Emma knew that she was debating whether or not to say what she wanted to say. She must have decided to chance it, because she eventually said, "I don't believe that he doesn't remember you. He was special to you, and you were obviously special to him."

"What makes you think that?" Emma asked, frowning at her mother.

"Did he take anyone else outside the night of the meteor shower?"

"No. It was just the two of us."

The gentle smile returned to her mother's face. "He wanted to share something with you, Emma. Something special, something that was just between you two. That doesn't sound like someone you just forget." Her smile turned sardonic. "Dark Curse notwithstanding."

Emma found herself returning Mary Margaret's smile. That was the kind of joke Emma would have made herself. Whether her sense of humor was simply rubbing off on Mary Margaret or she had inherited her sarcasm from her mother, though, Emma had no idea.

"I know you said you chose him for your family," Mary Margaret continued, "but did you ever consider the possibility that maybe he chose you, too?"

That finally made Emma look away. Maybe Matthew had chosen her for his family once, a long time ago. It didn't matter now. She couldn't find him.

It made her sad. It made her angry. She hadn't chosen very many people for her family. She'd chosen Matthew and …

And then it hit her. She'd chosen Mary Margaret for her family long before she knew they were actually related. She had Mary Margaret here with her now. She had _her mother_ with her now, and she had two other members of her family waiting for her back in Storybrooke: a father she was rather surprised to find she wanted to get to know and a wonderful son to whom she longed to return.

"Mary Margaret?" she spoke up softly. "We are going to get back to Storybrooke somehow, aren't we?"

Mary Margaret took Emma's hand in her own and squeezed. "We're going to find a way back to Storybrooke, Emma. I don't care what I have to do to make it happen, but I will make it happen."

Emma nodded, swallowing hard. "I don't care what I have to do to make it happen, either. I want to go home to my family."

The smile on Mary Margaret's face widened even as tears leaped into her eyes. When she tightened her grip on Emma's hand, Emma got the feeling she'd said exactly what her mother had been waiting to hear. "It's decided, then. Nothing is going to stop us from getting home."

And somehow, Emma knew that nothing would. She and Mary Margaret were going to make it back to Storybrooke and back to Henry and David.

Silence enveloped the campsite, not an awkward silence but a comfortable one. The kind of silence Emma used to like in Storybrooke, when she would work on paperwork she brought home from the sheriff's station while Mary Margaret did a crossword. The kind of silence neither of them minded because they knew the other was right there, ready for conversation if it was needed.

As Emma picked up Mulan's sword, the warrior's question from the previous night echoed in her mind. Maybe when Emma gave the sword back to her, she'd let her know she'd finally come up with an answer. Although being lost and found was ridiculously hard, Emma wouldn't have it any other way.


End file.
